Did you read the article?
"He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a 'flyaway toilet' or a 'helicopter toilet.'......He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag."
The inventor saw a problem and came up with a solution.
yes, but the time in which a radioactive isotope is reduced by half is in terms of a decay constant divided by ln(2). Which I am pretty sure is irrational and involves e \snark. The only time you have that nice integer decay curve is if the decay constant is ln(2)....so I think JD's point stands.
This only partly correct. TRU stands for transuranic waste. TRU is explicitly the waste produced from absorption of a neutron by a uranium isotope. The "excited" isotope then beta decays to Neptunium which then either decays again or absorbs a second neutron and either fissions of becomes excited and decays again. This process occurs billions of times in a reactor which is why you can accumulate isotopes as high as Californium in measurable quantities. Any isotope with a higher atomic number is considered TRU. You seem have fission products confused with the actinides higher than uranium. Fission products (FP) tend to be more radioactive which means that they decay rapidly (milli-seconds to days) with the exception of a fewer longer lived FP. For long term storage TRU becomes the main problem because the half-lives for decay are sufficiently longer. The idea behind this system is twofold: 1) Use an intense fast (fast meaning high energy) neutron flux produced from fusion to induce more fissions versus captures in the transuranic elements (TRU) to produce fission products that will decay rapidly and be less of a long term waste issue. 2) Allow for a use of fusion technology that will be a net energy producer. This is possible because the neutrons which escape the fusion process and are normally a loss will now produce fissions (at least some fraction of them will) which will hopefully produce enough energy to overcome the normal losses due to leakage (gamma rays, neutrinos, neutrons, ect).
Nuclear waste IS broken into two main categories LLW and HLW. Pretty much all fission products and transuranic elements are initially put in the HLW catagory since both groups of isotopes tend to be neutron heavy and want to decay. Of course/nuclear engr
An intermediate step would involve surrounding the Z-pinch machine with a subcritical fission chamber. Then you could use the pulsed neutron source from the Z-pinch to drive the fission and breed tritium. Then you could use the heat produced from both fusion/fission to generate electricity. As an added bonus you could fuel your subcritical chamber with transuranic "waste" from the current light water reactors. The fuel could be kept as a fluid which would eliminate fuel fabrication cost and the issues associated with minor actinide fuels.
At a pulse rate of.1 Hz you could generate a good amount of power and burn up alot of transuranics that won't have to be stored at Yucca Mountain.
Actually tritium can be "created" by causing Lithium to absorb a neutron. This reaction is Li + n -> He + T. Tritium could be produced using this reaction in several ways. Current light water reactors (LWRs) could be given Lithium rods as burnable poisons. A burnable poison (poison in the neutronic sense) is something that is added to a reactor early and life and is consumed as the fuel is consumed to maintain a critical (stable) reactor.
The deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion cross section is about 100 times greater than that for a DD fusion reaction. So almost any successful fusion device in the near future will probably operate on DT. One of the major problems with tritium is that it can diffuse through just about anything. Tritium is just radioactive hydrogen after all. Producing large amounts of tritium may be the down fall of fusion.
I am currently doing research on using neutrons produced from pulsed DT fusion to drive a subcritical fission reactor fueled with the transuranics (Pu, Np, Am, Cf) which has been processed from spent LWR fuel. The fusion driver would be similar to the Z-pinch at Sandia National Labs.
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Did you read the article? "He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a 'flyaway toilet' or a 'helicopter toilet.'... ...He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag."
The inventor saw a problem and came up with a solution.
yes, but the time in which a radioactive isotope is reduced by half is in terms of a decay constant divided by ln(2). Which I am pretty sure is irrational and involves e \snark. The only time you have that nice integer decay curve is if the decay constant is ln(2)....so I think JD's point stands.
This only partly correct. TRU stands for transuranic waste. TRU is explicitly the waste produced from absorption of a neutron by a uranium isotope. The "excited" isotope then beta decays to Neptunium which then either decays again or absorbs a second neutron and either fissions of becomes excited and decays again. This process occurs billions of times in a reactor which is why you can accumulate isotopes as high as Californium in measurable quantities. Any isotope with a higher atomic number is considered TRU. You seem have fission products confused with the actinides higher than uranium. Fission products (FP) tend to be more radioactive which means that they decay rapidly (milli-seconds to days) with the exception of a fewer longer lived FP. For long term storage TRU becomes the main problem because the half-lives for decay are sufficiently longer. The idea behind this system is twofold:
1) Use an intense fast (fast meaning high energy) neutron flux produced from fusion to induce more fissions versus captures in the transuranic elements (TRU) to produce fission products that will decay rapidly and be less of a long term waste issue.
2) Allow for a use of fusion technology that will be a net energy producer. This is possible because the neutrons which escape the fusion process and are normally a loss will now produce fissions (at least some fraction of them will) which will hopefully produce enough energy to overcome the normal losses due to leakage (gamma rays, neutrinos, neutrons, ect).
Nuclear waste IS broken into two main categories LLW and HLW. Pretty much all fission products and transuranic elements are initially put in the HLW catagory since both groups of isotopes tend to be neutron heavy and want to decay. Of course /nuclear engr
An intermediate step would involve surrounding the Z-pinch machine with a subcritical fission chamber. Then you could use the pulsed neutron source from the Z-pinch to drive the fission and breed tritium. Then you could use the heat produced from both fusion/fission to generate electricity. As an added bonus you could fuel your subcritical chamber with transuranic "waste" from the current light water reactors. The fuel could be kept as a fluid which would eliminate fuel fabrication cost and the issues associated with minor actinide fuels.
.1 Hz you could generate a good amount of power and burn up alot of transuranics that won't have to be stored at Yucca Mountain.
At a pulse rate of
Actually tritium can be "created" by causing Lithium to absorb a neutron. This reaction is Li + n -> He + T. Tritium could be produced using this reaction in several ways. Current light water reactors (LWRs) could be given Lithium rods as burnable poisons. A burnable poison (poison in the neutronic sense) is something that is added to a reactor early and life and is consumed as the fuel is consumed to maintain a critical (stable) reactor. The deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion cross section is about 100 times greater than that for a DD fusion reaction. So almost any successful fusion device in the near future will probably operate on DT. One of the major problems with tritium is that it can diffuse through just about anything. Tritium is just radioactive hydrogen after all. Producing large amounts of tritium may be the down fall of fusion. I am currently doing research on using neutrons produced from pulsed DT fusion to drive a subcritical fission reactor fueled with the transuranics (Pu, Np, Am, Cf) which has been processed from spent LWR fuel. The fusion driver would be similar to the Z-pinch at Sandia National Labs.