As part of the gains of the National workshop on Integrating Nuclear Techniques for Remediation of Plastic Waste Pollution in Nigeria (NUTEC) hosted by NAEC in February 2022, is the recent invitation and meeting of NAEC with the National Institute for Chemical Technology(NARICT) in Zaria. The NAEC three man delegation to NARICT was led by Dr Hamman Tukur Gabdo the director of NTC and the  two members of staff who made up the delegation were Engineer TK Mustapha Deputy Director Gamma Irradiation Facility(GIF) NTC and Engineer Adamu Gadu(NTC) who is the convener of the February 2022 National workshop on Integrating Nuclear Techniques for Remediation of Plastic Waste Pollution. 

The two day meeting was held between July 19th and 20th, 2022 at NARICT with the aim of familiarizing NAEC with the ground work NARICT has made in the area of Pyrolysis for a proposed partnership between the two agencies. We may wish to know that earlier on after the NUTEC February 2022 national workshop in which participants from NARICT were in attendance they initiated formal communication with NAEC with a desire to collaborate on Pyrolysis in plastic waste management and possible ways to use Gamma Irradiation of the GIF on the property of Pyrolysis materials.

Similarly, during the February national   workshop experts presented papers on plastic waste and its challenges to the environment. It was discovered that an annual estimate of eight million tonnes of plastics waste existing in the ocean are generated from Land. In view of this Micro and nanoplastics can be found in human blood stream due to consumption of aquatic animals and seafood. A staple very popular with many in the world including Nigerians. 

In Nigeria, virtually no plastic is recycled   thereby resulting into environmental problems, hence, the introduction of new and existing techniques like Pyrolysis by NARICT in collaboration with NAEC with the assistance of the IAEA’s nuclear technology for controlling plastics pollution otherwise known as NUTEC which  primarily aims at advanced recycling by application of irradiation technology which NAEC has at NTC sheda and to reliably asses the dominance of marine microplastics by use of isotope tracing. 

The NAEC team presented two papers. One on the activities of the commission presented by Engineer TK Mustapha the Deputy director/Head of GIF and the second paper was as on Polymer, plastics and the Gamma Irradiation Facility(GIF) presented by Engineer Adamu Gadu. The NAEC team also took a guided tour of the GCMS laboratory, Polymer and Textile laboratory as well as the Pyrolysis Reactor Operation room and the FTIR and HPLC laboratory at NARICT in order to assess its readiness and capabilities to go into fruitful partnership with NAEC.