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."

Comments

Yikes...

[Bob Vila's Hammer]

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 conversation went like this

[L. VeGas]

Kirk: Spock, I know! We'll use your glass laser to destroy our radiocative trash!

Spock: Captain, that is .... illogical.

A more interesting problem than iodine ..

[TTK Ciar]

.. 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

Re:A more interesting problem than iodine ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but your post contains many technical inaccuracies. Here they are, with brief commentary, in no particular order.

1. Japan has only one fast breeder reactor, Monju... an experimental design.
2. All of the recently constructed reactors in Japan are Light Water Reactors, either pressurized (PWR) or boiling (BWR).
3. ALL reactors fueled with uranium produce plutonium... and since the plutonium is in the core, some of it gets burned (and destroyed) by fission, contributing to the energy released by the fuel.
4. If we have excess plutonium available, we can use it to make fuel for reactors... it will be mixed with uranium dioxide to make mixed oxide fuel (MOX).
5. The difference betweeen a breeder and a non-breeder is the conversion ratio attainable. In non-breeders, the value is less than 1. In breeders, the value is greater than 1. A value of exactly 1 implies that for every atom of fuel fissioned, one new atom of fuel is created by transmutation of fertile material (i.e., U-238).
6. The ONLY reason to build a breeder with high conversion ratio is to produce excess plutonium for use in non-breeders.
7. Breeding is possible in light water reactors. This was demonstrated at Shippingport, PA. The conversion ratio is not high, but it is definitely greater than 1.
8. ALL reactors, whether breeder or non-breeder, produce wastes, including iodine.
9. The feature that distinguishes nuclear power is the energy density of the fuel, and the corresponding small volume of waste relative to amount of energy generated.
10. All spent fuel is not waste. Typically, about 95% of nuclear waste is just U-238... which just happens to be a fertile material perfect for creating plutonium in a breeder reactor.
11. A closed nuclear fuel cycle, in which breeder and non-breeder reactors are used and fuel reprocessing is allowed, achieves the highest possible utilization of fuel.
12. The closed fuel cycle is the holy grail of nuclear power. Even so, there would be waste products to eliminate.
13. Another method proposed for elimination of such waste is accelerator transmutation.
14. ANY method of reducing the toxicity of this waste is a welcome addition to the technological toolbox.

In summary... we know what to do with the plutonium (burn it as fuel). All reactors produce iodine, cesium, barium, krypton, xenon, lanthanum, etc. The volume of these waste products is small, but any method that can reduce the toxicity is desirable.

from the truth in article titles department...

[Tumbleweed]

"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

Re:alternative

[jgardn]

Some people are really stupid.

Clean coal. It is possible to burn coal so that there is not any of the nasties you get when you burn coal at home.

It is possible to burn most anything without getting nasty byproducts.

Concerning nuclear waste, the previous poster is right. It won't be sitting around for hundreds of thousands of years. We are going to figure out what to do with it very shortly. We are going to have literally clean burning fission power. We will be converting mass to energy with no nasty byproducts.

I find it amazing that on the one hand, people marvel at humanity's ability to do things like create dynamite, nuclear weapons, and clean drinking water from sewage, but on the other hand, say things like making clean burning energy from coal, not to mention plutonium, is impossible.

The BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Nor Anytime) Environmentalist are a walking paradox. One the one hand. science has the power to restore nature, but they refuse to allow science to help mankind.