| MadSci Network: Physics |
There has been quite a bit of interest in the nuclear community regarding the "transmutation" of nuclear waste to reduce its long-lived radioactive constituents. This is precisely the approach that you suggest. At the current time funding for research into this is rather tight so the efforts in the US are very limited. There is more interest in France and Japan although much of the work in the last 10 years was completed at US national laboratories. There are several sites for further information on the web: http://apt.lanl.gov/atw/index.html http://www.lanl.gov/ orgs/pa/science21/ATW.html http:// www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-2/text/radside1.html http://www.pnl.gov/atw/ http://db.nea.fr/html/trw/ http:// www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/atw/ATWreport.html Some studies have shown that transmutation of waste will be economic and reduce the need for long term geologic storage of nuclear waste, but many aspects of the process are controversial in the nuclear community. A typical nuclear power planst produces 500 to 1000 MW (mega Watts) of electricity. This results in the production of approximately 20 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel each year. This may sound like quite a lot of nuclear waste, but in terms of the volume is approximately 20 cubic feet of waste.
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