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Giant Laser Transmutes Nuclear Waste
paulnuyu writes "NewScientist is reporting that scientists have transmuted nuclear waste with the Vulcan Glass Laser, cutting iodine-129's half-life from 15.7 million years down to just 25 minutes (as iodine-128). The advance is remarkable, but not practical: the laser would need power from a number of power plants to transmute the waste produced from just one nuclear plant."
The Vulcan laser can produce short pulses of enormous power - a million billion watts. Pulses were fired at a small lump of gold, which produced enough gamma radiation to knock out single neutrons from iodine-129, converting it to iodine-128. The results of the experiment will be published by the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.
As if needing the power of several plants to operate wasn't expensive enough, they fire the laser at a lump of gold? Is this a new Austin Powers movie in the making?
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
Now all we need to do is create self-replicating nano-lasers and nano-nuclear power plants, so that the nano-power plants can make more of themselves to power the nano-lasers that were made to clean up after the nano-power plants that made more of themselves to power the nano-lasers that made more of themselves to clean up after the nano-power plants...
Grey goo, here we come!
Kirk: Spock, I know! We'll use your glass laser to destroy our radiocative trash!
.... illogical.
Spock: Captain, that is
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Sure, it's too expensive to use the power of multiple power plants to eliminate the waste of only one power plant. That would be completely impractical!
But imagine if we had a Beowolf Cluster of Vulcan Lasers!
~foooo
I was reading the stupid DivX story by timothy and clicked on "Also by timothy".
I saw this, which is a new story but not on the front page.
have I bypassed the "subscibers see it early" ?
...at the Duke Nukem Forever development team, I just might live to see the release date.
Two things come to mind:
1) Wouldn't this process increase the demand for additional power plants and thus increase the possible amount of neuclear waste lying around. I suppose once we get fusion off the ground it's a possibility, but not anytime soon IMHO.
2) About a million atoms of iodine-129 were transformed into iodine-128
Umm.. wouldn't all those neutrons knocked loose generate more radioactive waste by contaminating anything nearby?
Seems more like a really nifty way to perform isotopic refinement of a material than than a waste management solution, IMO.
.. would be the elimination of plutonium as a waste product.
There is a type of nuclear reactor called a "breeder reactor" which generates as its waste product more plutonium, which can then be used to power more breeder reactors. All of the recently-constructed nuclear power plants in Japan are of this type. It was hoped to herald a new age of wasteless nuclear power.
Unfortunately, the breeder reactors produce more plutonium than can be used, both in sheer volume and in rate of production. Quite simply, they couldn't build new power plants fast enough to keep up with plutonium production, nor would they want to. Oops.
To make matters worse, the plutonium "waste" is more dangerous than the normal kind, and more difficult to safely store.
If we could economically zap plutnonium en masse and make it into something relatively benign, it would enable the existing breeder-reactor technology to revolutionize the power industry. This iodine-zapping trick only helps with non-breeder plants, which are vastly less valuable.
Not to seem as though I'm harshing on these guys -- Kudos to them! Rather, I hope they are able to apply this technology to plutonium "waste", eventually. If they get it to work economically on iodine first, that's also good, because there is a lot of iodine waste sitting around being dangerous. It would be nice in the long run if we could replace the older iodine-producing nuclear reactors to breeder reactors, but to do that we'd need to figure out how to deal with the plutonium.
-- TTK
- twit
- dolt
- idiot
- luser
- windows baby
with the others being:The real interesting part about this is that after we develop fusion power we can turn around and clean up all the waste from our time using fission. All the nuclear dump sites can be opened up and be neutralized. This will remove several hazards, terrorism, radiation, etc, etc.
They can use other materials to make gamma radiation, the gold is not a key part.
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
This may be impractical now, but I'm counting on humanity discovering some new abundant source of power, such as Mr. Fusion, hopefully sooner than later. If energy weren't so hard to produce, a lot of technologies would immediately become feasable, or at least easier to research, like ion propulsion, anti-gravity devices, matter synthesis a la STTNG, teleportation, time travel, the list goes on. So anyway once we have Mr. Fusions then it shouldn't be any problem to dispose of all of our old nuke waste so go ahead and make more! Afterall we have a secure location in Yucca mountain to store it, right? Right? Oh, hmm... shit
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
...if it needs power from many conventional nuclear power plants to process the waste from a single one?
In just 30 years we will have fusion power plants -- therefore, all we have to do is store those nasty nuclear byproducts for just 30 years.
Preferably in Utah. Oh wait.
...for the Vulcan was the Fluffy Bunny Glass Laser.
Iodine-129: "You expect me to talk, Mr. Ledingham?"
... Pun is the death of wit."
Ledingham: "No, Mr. I-129, I expect you to die."
Note: Inexplicable urge to change the last word to "dye" overcome by recalling the first mantra of humor: "Pun is the death of wit
/* Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau! La moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau. - Corneille */
"Giant Waste of Electricity Transmutes Grant Money into Laser"
w00t!
I bet _that's_ a fun lab to play in. Just don't hook up the controls to the MCP, boys.
End of Line
I didn't read the article (of course!) but I'm guessing this is merely a proof-of-concept style demonstration. You're right that there is much more awful stuff out there to be worried about than Iodine. But we need to take baby steps here. First show the method can be performed. Then make it economic. Then apply it to the real nasty stuff like plutonium.
I think this is exciting news. Nuclear energy is one of the few methods of producing energy in which we can contain the less-desirable effects. Fossil fuels belch fumes into the sky where they will never be reclaimed from. Construction of solar panels requires nasty chemicals. Even wind power kills countless birds each year. Nuclear energy gives dangerous waste but at least that waste can be contained. And this new work is the first indication that perhaps -- someday -- we'll be able to take this contained waste and turn it into something far less dangerous.
There are plenty of ways you can attack this work as far as practicality is concerned. Let's give them time to see if they can make this economically viable or not.
GMD
watch this
s/impracticle/impractical
</spelling nazi>
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Would you please stop humping the laser?
Why does everyone seem to equate "long half-life" with "bad" and "short half-life" with "good"? Things with long half-lives are stable; the ones you need to worry about are the ones with the short half-lives because they break down very quickly. Why is this so hard for everyone to comprehend?
I saw a poll once where people said they wouldn't mind having large quantities of radioactive material with < 1 day half-life trucked past their home, but would object strongly to matierial with million-to-billion year half life passing by. This means that the most radioactive isotopes of Radon, Plutonium, etc. are fine, but they don't want any of the normal isotopes of Iron, Silicon, Carbon, etc. in their neighborhood.
That's just plain nuts!
-- MarkusQ
I've always thought it was pretty silly spending millions or billions of dollars on plans for storing radioactive wastes for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. The simplistic assumption is that it is "scientificly impossible" to alter the halflife of waste - that it would be useless and deadly for ages. This article is a perfect example of how advancing technology makes that irrational. In a few tens of years (or even a few hundred years if you're a pessimist) we will have the technology to reprocess the waste or something. Hell, we'll probably mine the waste and USE it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Vulcan Laser huh...hmm, now all we need is to find a shark big enough to attach the friggin laser to its head.
I knew it, Aliens do really exist. I'd love to get my hands on some Vulcan technology!
Live Long and Prosper - V
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Something with a halflife of a few days isn't a problem, it is gone before it sits around long... If something has a halflife of 10e-16 seconds, but decays into something with a halflife of 10,000 years, it is still dangerious in quanity.
Foul! You changed scope there. I agree that something with a half life of 10,000 years can be dangeous in quantity but I still maintain that it would be safer than the same quantity of the 10e-16 precursor. You are right, it will be gone before it sits around long, but if you are talking about "in quantity" chances are you and a good chunk of the scenery will be gone with it!
-- MarkusQ
The title of this story remind's me of Calvin's adventures with his transmogrifer. I still wish I had that kind of imagination.
This idea (using laser-produced photons for transmuting waste by photonuclear reactions) is fundamentally flawed. The efficiency of producing the photons by this mechanism sucks, and the cross section for (gamma,n) reactions is much lower than the cross section for the gammas to scatter off of (and lose energy to) electrons.
It is possible to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and reuse it in different nuclear reactors. Reprocessing involves more handling of the spent fuel and (as far as I know) is not done in the US but it is done in Europe. I worked at a lab in France where some of this handling is done (either just testing or reprocessing - I'm not sure I was just there to use the magnetometer). Apparently radiation leaks do happen. Thus I'm not saying this is definately the way to go. It may be better than the alternatives, for now at least.
_ _
Remember, the US elected the man who wanted to use "clean coal". (This statement rings in my memory as it singlehandedly changed my friend, a former US Marine, away from voting for Bush.)
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a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The advance is remarkable, but not practical: the laser would need power from a number of power plants to transmute the waste produced from just one nuclear plant.
They wouldn't happened to have tested this little bugger out on, say, Thursday, would they?
No comment.
I'd love to know where you heard 30 years. That would be a dream come true. Too bad it's not likely...
Why is this not likely? What makes you say this? I will turn 37 years old in just a couple months. In my first six years I was privileged to see humankind's first tentative steps into space. The advancement that has been made in technology since I turned 7 years old has been mind boggling to say the least.
By playing the odds. Practical fusion power has been 20 years away for the past 50 years. Don't hold your breath about it showing up within the next 20-30. Things look promising now. They've looked promising in the past, too. We won't know until the first commercial fusion plant comes online how long it'll really take to solve all of the problems with fusion.
My own guess is that it'll be possible to build a commercial fusion power reactor within 50 years, but that it won't be done, as it will be more expensive than other forms of power (the fusion schemes that have come close to working aren't cheap), and will still produce radioactive waste (all practical forms of fusion produce neutrons in copious quantity, and that makes your reactor housing radioactive).
However, my timeline guess isn't any more valid than the "20-30 years" one. Much like the end of the Wheel of Time series or the next Linux kernel, it'll get here when it's good and ready.
Not unh, I know this guy, Dr. David Banner, and he says gamma radiation is bad for you to be exposed to too much of it, cause that like happened to him once, and like made him all funny and stuff, and felt weird and stuff, and he...well, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.....
"The sub-picosecond pulse is produced using the technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA)."
OK, where's the bird?
- "They misunderestimated me."
Excess plutonium shouldn't be a problem. My associate, Mr. Moon Kim Sang will buy as much as you can produce.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
You mention will power. Fusion research funding was decimated by the Clinton administration. There wasn't enough money left over by the time they were done, to pay the maintenance costs (i.e. janitors). Several major projects were cut completely. A joint international project was killed (because the U.S. backed out). Needless to say, there's been very little money poured into the projects. We know we must do it; we're just not willing to fund it.
How?
From the [f]A:
"It's a nice idea," [Swiss nuclear waste scientest Ian] McKinley told New Scientist, "but I wouldn't buy shares in a company selling this process quite yet."
Hey, Ian, are you nuts? That's like saying "Computers are a nice idea, but I wouldn't buy shares in that IBM automated typewriter company just yet."
Right now would be the best time to invest in a company that has a chance of developing this technology. Give it 20 or 30 years, and you'll be sitting pretty -- assuming, of course, that you've also invested in the company's competitors and otherwise diversified.
For crying out loud... I thought day-trading went out with the dot-com bust. I guess some people never learn...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
By regulating the temperature of the burn and what chemicals in what proportions are introduced during the burn. There are currently Japanese garbage-burning facilities that burn plastics and other nasty stuff into harmless gasses like water and C02.
If all else fails, you can just up the temperature until the substance burns as a plasma. Then the only byproducts are the individual atoms themselves. As a bonus, you can sort the atoms by weight with electromagnetic fields.
Or you can do this new procedure and bypass the burning completely. Superheat the substances and process the organic chemicals until out comes natural gas and oil. The other stuff that is non-organic can be filtered out quite easily.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Instead of spending so much time and effort on transmuting the waste,they should work on mearly sweeping it under a Somebody Else's Problem field. I'd give it a week before society forgot there ever was a problem...
Since the material now decays (knocking out neutrons) in a shorter timeframe than before, are we perhaps enabling the creation of a whole new class of fission bombs? Any physics majors out there?
Anyone want to guess what region of the country they recently stole the power from? :)
Stop humping the giant "laser".