New technology could reduce radioactivity in nuclear waste by up to 80%
New technology could reduce radioactivity in nuclear waste by up to 80%/Nueva tecnología podría reducir la radiactividad de los desechos nucleares en hasta un 80% (@mauromar)
Transmutation is not new technology. It has always been too expensive to be used on an industrial level. I dont think that has changed. also by no means does it reduce the cost of dismantling and securing npp sites. Dont be fooled :/
You seem to know stuff.
Why don’t we take “depleted” fuel and use it in a low power atomic power plant? The rest radioactivity can be burned off just like their main radioactivity right?
There should be a solution to burn them further down and generate electricity with it.
Or do they lose the properties to burn them?
Thanks
The reactors we use now can't run on depleted fuel. It's true that like 90% of the uranium is still present in deleted fuel but that's not the problem. The problem is the build up of fission products. The fuel itself is essentially a ceramic pellet in a metal tube. As it gets "burned" some of the atoms in the fuel split into new smaller atoms. Specifically some that are "poisons" and some that are gases. The poisons absorb neutrons much more easily than the fuel atoms, stopping the chain reaction. And the gases create pressure inside the fuel pellet. If enough gases build up this can cause the pellet to crack, releasing them into the metal tube. Now you have one less barrier to releasing radioactive material and your pellet isn't in the shape it's supposed to be anymore making it harder to know how it will react.
So we can't use them in current reactors, what about "low power" reactors? This is a problem of economics. Depleted fuel is hot, but not hot enough to quickly boil water and make steam. It's like asking why don't we power our house off all the free heat coming off a person all the time. The temperature difference and heat output is just too low to be useful in any but the smallest niche application.
So how do we deal with the depleted fuel? We reprocess it. Break down the fuel and dissolve it in acid so you can recover all the useful uranium to make new fuel. The leftover radioactive material can then be turned into glass and safely stored or you could feed it into a different type of reactor that "burns" the waste turning into something that only needs stored for 200 years instead of 20,000 years. All this has been well known and understood since the 80s but politics consistently gets in the way of actually doing anything.
Is there any source with any real information? This one is just bullshit.
Here's a more measured take on it, particularly the Update section - though it's written by the company creating the long-term waste repository in Switzerland so there's some obvious bias.
It appears the modeling/simulation code Transmutex developed is heavily based on the open-source Geant4 toolkit.
You lost me at this:
For this transmutation Transmutex proposes using a particle accelerator, probably because the promoter of the idea is a former engineer at CERN,
Yeah it's definitely not that the only reliable method we have of knocking protons off of atoms involves either a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator, dude is just bringing his old job with him cause he doesn't know any better. Right.
No, as non-experts, we must dismiss the knowledge of experts because their approach is not non-magical pseudoscience bullshit that consists mostly of evocative imagery.
I don’t need no boring particle accelerator! I want an atom smasher that’s been combined with cutting edge AI and the latest in superconducting magnet technology to tame matter down to the subatomic level so it can shoot a laser made of protons into radioactive materials to fundamentally alter its elemental properties so it no longer emits (as much) radiation!
Indeed, this is like the techbro approach to nuclear reactors, which seems like the worst of all possible worlds: all buzzwords and bullshit hiding barely-concealed scams about shit that can absolutely kill you.
Yeah, no thanks. Solar panels.
Hope you like lithium mines.
Water is the best battery. Hydro at night, solar and wind at day.
Complete bullshit. Just enough of the basic tech checks out to fool an investor. They going to knock protons off thousands of pounds of nuclear waste and irradiated material? One atom at a time? Good thing there aren't many atoms in things, It'll only take a few hours at most, lol.
This'll be used by people wanting to sell expensive, dangerous nuclear reactors. That still produce nuclear waste, and sometimes melt down to create global disasters. Instead of cheap, easy wind and solar.
This is just a scam, but like most scams, there's some real, and some made-up information.
Oh look, another armchair expert going in about how nuclear is a waste of time and effort, literally using the same argument that oil companies have been using to keep nuclear away.
"oh it's so sooper dooper dangerous, you should invest in renewables" lobbies the shit out of nations to keep wind and solar projects from taking off
Sources. You need to back all of that up then compare it to fossil fuels and the damage to the environment they cause then shut the fuck up.
Don't feed this troll.
Fucking gladly be blocked by someone who rambles like this.
Nice try, nuclear lobby. We still dont want your dirty tech instead of 100% renewables.
It has the least amount of deaths of ANY energy source we have per amount of power generated. That is if we assume the maximum amount of deaths from the nuclear accidents etc., if we assume more reasonable numbers there is no debate at all. And that comes on top of the extremely low CO2 emissions.
I always wondered if it wasn't the Kremlin who pushed those anti nuclear agendas (I grew up in Sweden and eventually the "greens" wanted to dismantle nit only the nuclear power plants but also the army). They are never based in facts, only fear, and they helped Russia a lot with not only gas&oil exports but a lot of soft power coming with them.
/Thank you for coming to my conspiracy talk!
Thats total and utter bs. The cost of nuclear is insanely high, especially for storing. On top comes the "not in my backyard" situation which makes the most vulnerable people be the ones most affected. We are seeing days on 100% renewables. Its not that hard to understand.
You’re saying nuclear power is responsible for less deaths and sicknesses than for example… wind?
But a couple of hundred thousand displaced people don't count, of course. Also, there are no reliable statistics on fatalities because these are being systematically suppressed. I wonder why that is?
That damn nuclear lobby, shipping metric tons of uranium across the world on nuclear powered ships, digging, stripping, pumping every single ounce of nuclear fuel all across the world on land and at sea, with a complete disregard towards human beings and the environment, all for billions in yearly profit.
These damn nuclear power exporters, wagging war on each other to gain control of nuclear resources to build more and more nuclear power plants, corrupting governments, killing people, polluting the air and the water all over the world. Pitting people against one another on carbon free energy generation, distracting from the real issue of completely getting rid of nuclear power generation to keep the planet livable in the future.
Yeah, that goddamn nuclear power lobby and nuclear power itself are definitely the problem in the fight against climate change.
Trying to make it funny does not change the fact that it is total moral corruption to push nuclear. There are long and detailed lists why nuclear is not the solution. Among them is that statistically, chernobil definitely will happen again, and it did btw. Long term storage is insanely expensive and we already are approaching high levels of renewables. The time we need to build nuclear reactors, next to the materials make it all just a pipe dream to mentally divest from renewables.
Its the same disinformation as immigrants taking our jobs and homes. Nuclear still requires someone with far superior technology. Otherwise you risk mass death. Renewables are easy to operate.
Just going to point out most of these comments, including the original, are based on Chernobyl which was a reactor not built to standard and based older tech even during its time. I'm not against renewables, but a nuclear reactor is definitely better than a coal plant or natural gas plant in terms of energy production, safety (modern tech to today, stop thinking Chernobyl) CO2 production, and sustainability.
Fukushima was supposed to be better. It wasn't. They weren't an abandoned Soviet reactor, they were efficient, well-trained Japanese. 3 mile island was America. It can happen anywhere.
Don't compare nuclear to coal. Nobody's making new coal plants, and they sure wouldn't have been replaced by a far more expensive nuclear plant.
You are against renewables. In the time it takes to design, build, and start operation of a nuclear plant, you could have made an entire factory to produce wind turbines or photovoltaics, and have been making product for years before the nuclear plant even opens. If they open, because most nuclear reactors don't go online due to cost overruns, time overruns, construction problems, etc... Then they just sit there, a big concrete foundation making zero energy.
Your thinking is out of the 1970's-80's. Completely outdated by at least 50 years.
Yes daddy fill me with sweet coal, gas and lithium 🥵
The matrix happened because the machines used renewables thus the enemy eternally destroyed the atmosphere.
If the machines used nuclear energy they would have won.
God bless all intelligent forms
A lot of comments here are displaying their ignorance of nuclear technology.
Keep eating up the oil company talking points, I guess. "hey guys remember those nuclear meltdowns from outdated reactors that had all kinds of things going wrong because of poor design and decision making, most of which is no longer an issue? Yeah things blow up so better keep chugging away at those fossil fuels while we sabotage any investments into renewables"
I mean goddamn, the "worst" disaster in the USA was a big nothing burger that was sensationalized by newspapers that knew how to sell a headline, and oil companies that knew how to leverage any sort of negative press to their advantage.
When the fallout from nuclear disasters doesn't come close to the amount of radiation out off by burning and refining fossil fuels, there is no argument.
I would stop them right there and ask when the last oil spill was.
It was last month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
Even without oil spills. The fossil fuel method of dealing with waste is to vent it into the atmosphere. Nuclear only does that when something goes very wrong, and even then it causes significantly fewer fatalities.
You could have a Chernobyl every single day and still kill fewer people than coal and oil.
The safety aspects alone SHOULD be enough to convince people, yet here we are.
The difference between nuclear-power- related disasters and fossil fuel related disasters is astronomical.
And honestly the amount of radioactive isotopes that get spewed out from burning coal day in day out for decades on end absolutely dwarfs the amount of radioactivity released from nuclear disasters.
Why do you think that those against nuclear energy are for fossil fuels? My building has solar panels, and backup power comes from either wind turbines or the hydraulic dam down the river.
The 3-Mile Island incident hit two weeks after The China Syndrome hit theaters. (A movie about a runaway nuclear meltdown.)
Otherwise the story would have been, "A tiny poof of radioactive steam got loose, everything was handled quickly and perfectly, no big deal, and back to you Tom (Brokaw).
Yep. So much of this shit from "environmental activists" that have no fucking clue how any of this works. It's been shown time and time again that nuclear is the answer for base load energy requirements with minimal environmental impact.
When and where? Nuclear is very very expensive. Nuclear doesn't work well as baseload since while you can turn it off rather quickly you can't turn it back on fast when it's needed again
These are two excellent videos by Kyle Hill, explaining where we are with nuclear power. They're Invidious Links, because I block all trackers from Google, which means youtube doesn't work for me. I put the titles beside the links in-case people want to search them up themselves. The War in Ukraine, The Far-right, the intolerance and the propaganda on social media. It's because they want to push us to war. Electric cars, plus modern nuclear power means the end to the artificial energy crisis. Means the end to Petrostates like Russia, Saudi Arabia and what the US is fast turning into. The fossil fuel industry has suppressed this technology for the last 70 years. That is why they need us at war, because there are no electric tanks. Anyone who is skeptical about nuclear power, I urge you to watch these. I promise you, threatening Denmark over Greenland will make a lot more sense with this context.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BcoN2bdACGA Why Isn’t Thorium Changing the World?
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago
The fossil fuel industry has been suppressing all alternatives to fossil fuels. They have entire research departments that work on inventing green energy solutions and then they patent them and shelve them.
Thank you for the videos. The links didn't work for me, though, so for anyone else for whom it doesn't work, here are the links:
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
https://youtu.be/BcoN2bdACGA