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New technique renders nuclear waste harmless in tens of years, instead of thousands

07/31/06

New technique renders nuclear waste harmless in tens of years, instead of thousands

Categories: Environment, Energy, Safety & Security, Physics 09:16:36 am

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As the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) prepares to issue advice to government on nuclear waste, a group of physicists claims to have discovered a technique that could make nuclear waste much easier to deal with. The new technique, reported in the Physics World, would render nuclear waste harmless on timescales of just a few tens of years, instead of thousands.

[More:]

Professor Claus Rolfs, leader of the group at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, said “The method we are proposing means that nuclear waste could probably be dealt with entirely within the lifetimes of the people that produce it. We would not have to put it underground and let our great-great-grandchildren pay the price for our high standard of living.”

The technique involves embedding the nuclear waste in a metal and cooling it to ultra-low temperatures. This speeds up the rate of decay of the radioactive materials potentially cutting their half lives by a factor of 100 or more.

Professor Rolfs added “We are currently investigating radium-226, a hazardous component of spent nuclear fuel with a half-life of 1600 years. I calculate that using this technique could reduce the half-life to 100 years. At best, I have calculated that it could be reduced to as little as two years. This would avoid the need to bury nuclear waste in deep repositories - a hugely expensive and difficult process.”

Rolfs developed the technique after trying to recreate experimentally the way in which atomic nuclei react in the centre of stars. Whilst using a particle collider to carry out his studies, he noticed that more nuclear fusion reactions happened in the collider if the atomic nuclei were encased in metal and cooled. Fusion involves light nuclei coalescing to form heavier nuclei, releasing energy in the process. Radioactive decay is the opposite: a particle is released from a nucleus. Rolfs believes that if cooling nuclei in metal enhances fusion, it could enhance the opposite reaction, namely speeding up the rate at which radioactive particles decay.

According to Rolfs, the lower temperature of the metal means that free electrons can get closer to the radioactive nuclei. These electrons accelerate positively charged particles towards the nuclei, thereby increasing the probability of fusion reactions, or in the opposite case, accelerate particles that are being ejected from the nucleus.

“We are working on testing the hypothesis with a number of radioactive nuclei at the moment and early results are promising”, he said. “It is early days, and much engineering research will need to be done to put this idea into practise, but I don’t think there will be any insurmountable technical barriers.”

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Comment from: MrEs [Visitor]

Sounds great, Australia is having big debats ATM because our govenment wants to use nuclear. With this it sounds like a possible good power source

Permalink 07/31/06 @ 15:59

Comment from: KK [Visitor]

The energy it will take to cool material down in neither free nor available. If you use nucler fuel to produce energy it will create more wwaste then we will be able to stablize.

Good start. I hope it will put me out of business. I have only 10 more years to go with nuclear waste.

Permalink 07/31/06 @ 16:41

Comment from: Eric [Visitor]

>>"The energy it will take to cool material down in neither free nor available."

Just when you thought you read every stupid post.. out pops another one.

Permalink 07/31/06 @ 17:01

Comment from: gnomic [Visitor]

All that deadly waste today is next years power source. IT sould be a shame to throw it all away...

Permalink 07/31/06 @ 18:34

Comment from: Casey [Visitor]

"The energy it will take to cool material down in neither free nor available."

Maybe if we used all the money and energy spent burrying it...
>_>

Permalink 07/31/06 @ 18:51

Comment from: MG [Visitor]

Either the reporter or PR person for the organization has completely messed this up or Professor Rolfs is spaeking only in theoretical models, but the reported effect is not dupicated experimentally. It's akin to cold fusion. There may be be some interesting subtle phenomenen hiding here, but the proposed process is untenable.

Permalink 08/01/06 @ 05:52

Comment from: G [Visitor]

I would like to see how the energy balance looks.
Presumably if the material is decaying more reapidly it is generating significant heat? Therefore the energy required for cooling could well be very significant...
If this takes say 20% of the energy produced by that lump of fuel, then this already expensive type of power becomes even more so, especially as fuel prices continue to rocket...

Meanwhile solar power and other alternatives CUT their real costs year on year... By the time Nuclear power is even vaguely "safe and cheap" Alternatives will have far outstripped it.. how about we put a similar effort into renewables to that which has been poured into nuclear?

No-one, wants to live next-door to a nuclear powerplant, uranium mine, reprocessing plant, or even the big fridges this will need....

Permalink 08/08/06 @ 04:28

Comment from: CHS [Visitor]

A few years back, I began developement of a process to encapulate and incinderate high level nuclear waste. The process involved utilizing a certain type/ grade of resin. For the most part the high level waste is encapulated in a filtering resin that is used to clean/ filter the reactor media (water). Along with this comes metal particles that have become embedded with radiation. These metal or solid particles are what generates the high level radiation. Water/ liquid can be evaporated from the radiation leaving the radiation as a gas, which all gas can be dispersed in a controlled manner. The trick is to dry/ stabilize the filtering media. The filtering media is a very high performance media that does it's job extremely well, but when it's life is over it still contains the high level waste. Removing the liquid from the filtering resin today is done in various manners which end up with the filtering media/ resins encapulated in some form of bag/ container. The difficulty rest with these bags/ containers remaining sealed for the entire half life of the waste/ filtering media. Once the seal is broken and air is available to this filtering media the filtering media fills with moisture that it can extract from the atmoshere.
The process that was developed and uncontaminated samples were produced, dries/ dehydrates the filtering media/ resin beads to where the media no longer has the ability to absorb moisture. The process is basically a two or three step process. Process one requires the mixing of a highly functional dehydrating resin with the filtering media/ resin. In the mixing process the filtering media absorbs the dehydrating resin. The dehydrating resin causes the filtering media to dryout and become unmoisture absorbing/ stabilized. The next part of the process would be the processors choice. A processor can leave this mix set for a length of time, pack it, and dispose of it. The method I prefer is to produce cakes from these mixes. Cakes can be cold pressed or hot (approx. 400 degrees F.) pressed. Cold pressed cakes can be packed, but may crumble in the process. Hot pressed cakes can be packed, even if broken will not crumble and only consume about 1/8th the space of cold pressed cakes. As a preference I prefer to incinderate the cakes and release the radiation to the atmoshere, in a controlled release. These cakes can be incinderated at approximately 800 degrees F with approx. .01 percent ash deposit. This ash desposit will contain any remaining radiactive metal left from the filtering media. Further incinderation at about 2000 degrees F will desolve the metal. The metal can also be desolved through glass encassment, acid bath, burial.

The process described in conjunction with the dehydration resin is the developement invented/ pioneered/ owned by Clyde H. Shaulis, Jr. of Shaulis Design Service.

Permalink 08/24/06 @ 08:13

Comment from: Adam [Visitor]

One problem with this whole proposal is that most of the so-called waste is unused U238 and long-lived fissiles. If integral fast-breeder reactors were used that can burn up most of what we call 'waste' then the remaining short-lived nuclides would be safe within 300 years, making this whole stupid debate pointless.

Permalink 09/11/06 @ 17:34