"I've always been interested in science, and I grew up not far from Sellafield, so in many ways this is the perfect job for me," Gemma says.  "It's exciting because the technology's developing all the time, and there are always new things to work on.  "I've got a project coming up where I'm helping manage a team of nuclear scientists from more than 30 countries, so I get to travel and meet new people. It's brilliant."

For decades, nuclear research in the UK has been in decline. The number of people involved has fallen from around 9,000 in 1980 to just 1,000 a few years ago. At the same time, the industry's image has been tarnished by accidents such as Chernobyl in 1986.

Tackling concerns about safety is vital to improve the public perception of nuclear energy, according to Peter Bleasdale, managing director of Nexia Solutions, the public sector company that runs the research operation at Sellafield.  "To begin with, there wasn't a clear partition between nuclear weapons programmes and civil nuclear energy for generating electricity," he says.  "But things are different nowadays. There are now safeguards in place to make sure that partition is clear, and there's no mixing of technologies and materials."

The industry's own "secretive" attitude has not helped its reputation either - "but that's changed in a big way", Mr Bleasdale says.  "We've got a real and critical role to play in energy generation, and we want people to know what we're doing and to get involved."

As part of this process of opening up, researchers at Sellafield are working with schools and universities to put atomic energy onto the curriculum.  They also hope more students will start to think of nuclear energy as a possible career for them.

According to Cogent, the skills body responsible for the nuclear sector, 9,000 graduates will be needed over the next decade simply to maintain existing operations and deal with decommissioning.  The plan to build new power stations will require a further influx of skilled employees.

While the the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is busy decommissioning Sellafield's old reactors, the site is confident it still has a future - based mainly on research developed in its laboratories. One innovation already attracting international interest is the "RadBall" - a spherical device that can be placed in a contaminated area to determine the level of radiation present, without the need for an operator or a power supply.

It has been developed by one of the senior researchers, Steven Stanley. "It looks almost like a disco ball," he says as he peers inside. He explains it is made out of a "special sensitive polymer material, covered by an outer sheath made of lead with lots of little holes in it". Any radiation passes through the holes and creates patterns inside the ball, which can be analysed to determine the radiation strength. The benefit is that no person needs to enter potentially contaminated space and put themselves at risk.

Back in the laboratory, Gemma Johnson is getting ready to go home. She takes off her protective goggles and hangs up her lab coat. "It's frustrating sometimes. You see the stereotype professors on TV, pottering away with their fusty books. It's not like that at all.  "I'm normal. I can party like anyone else. I don't have three heads!

Extracted for BBC Website 18th June 2008