
Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest - malshe
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-nuclear-waste-storage-france/
======
hairytrog
Spent nuclear fuel, sometimes called waste, is actually a resource that next
generation reactors will be able to tap - both for energy and uncommon element
feedstock. Just like shale used to be "garbage" until the tech to make it
useful was developed, spent fuel will be seen as waste until we can make it
useful. Letting this very manageable amount of waste sit in repositories until
we get our shit together is utterly reasonable. In the US, it would take just
one facility to deal with all 99 reactor waste streams.

I don't think we need to spend money and energy to transmute it by theses
questionable laser schemes. Accelerator driven transmutation of waste was
shown the dustbin a few decades ago, hopefully this will have the same fate.
Please don't ruin our valuable trash.

~~~
Tepix
> Spent nuclear fuel, sometimes called waste, is actually a resource that next
> generation reactors will be able to tap

That's just hope. How convenient not having to deal with the mess! To me, it
sounds like a religion.

The same argument could be applied to rising CO2 levels. Just let future
generations figure it out. What could go wrong?

~~~
piokoch
I think there are important differences. We know that wastes has energy
(otherwise they would not radiate), there are stored in a well specified area.

Unfortunately nuclear energy had a very bad PR for past 50 years, as a result
nobody wanted to do any searcher in areas related to it).

It seems that it is slightly better now, environmental organizations at least
are not trying to occupy nuclear reactors, unfortunately still they are
pushing wind farms and solar farms, even though they cannot be usable on a
massive scale without efficient way to store energy surplus.

~~~
pvaldes
> nuclear energy had a very bad PR for past 50 years

There is not a positive way to tell people that will be forced to quit their
homes, workplaces and properties when nuclear problems eventually arose but
hide information or lie systematically about it does not help, neither does
the "see no evil/ what could happen?/ but nobody died / your cancer is not my
fault" permanent defensive stance deployed again and again.

Nuclear energy sector worked hard to earn the current mistrust

~~~
roenxi
> There is not a positive way to tell people that will be forced to quit their
> homes, workplaces and properties when nuclear problems eventually arose ...

That is an enormous problem, but the problem there is that governments aren't
being held accountable for forcing people out of their homes.

The Fukashima evacuation debatabley caused ~3 orders of magnitude more deaths
than the Fukushima nuclear disaster ([0] see the sidebar for 2,000:1 figure
and the opening paragraphs for the debatable part).

When the cure is that much worse than the disease, we have to ask why we are
forcing people to evacuate.

Whenever the government enacts a policy there are the potential for
statistical deaths. Approve a coal plant? Statistical deaths. Change safety
standards? Statistical deaths. Drop speed limits? Statistical deaths. We can
cope with some unidentifiable people being worse off. It happens all the time.
The responses to nuclear risks are not only irrational, they are out of line
with how we treat all other physical and chemical hazards.

Statistical illness and deaths from nuclear are _not_ worse than any other
health issue. This is a fantastic time to use the science to make decisions,
and it isn't at all obvious to what standard the exclusion zones are being
managed. When the gap in damage done by the response and the crisis is that
large there is a lot of room for questions to be asked (I wish I spoke
Japanese so I could look up some primary reports on the subject).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties)

~~~
baud147258
> Drop speed limits? Statistical deaths

In that case, is there an increase or decrease in statistical deaths? We had a
recent change here and I'm interested on how it might change things

------
08-15
A ridiculous idea.

The article doesn't go into technical details, but it appears this boils down
to a compact proton accelerator. Those protons could be smashed into heavy
metal atoms, which will release high energy neutrons. Those neutrons could in
turn be used to irradiate nuclear waste, transmuting it.

The first problem with that idea is that stable atoms would be transmuted,
too. So unless the waste is separated chemically (aka reprocessed),
irradiating it with neutrons tends to make matters worse. In some cases,
notable cesium, isotopic separation seems necessary. But if you assume
reprocessing, you might as well stuff the components to be irradiated into a
reactor, where the actinides act as fuel and some waste products will
transmute away.

The second problem is the ridiculously low efficiency of such an accelerator
system. Carlo Rubbia has been talking about the concept (ADS, Accelerator
Driven System, also called Energy Amplifier) for something like 20 years, and
even he only envisions supplying comparatively few neutrons to a subcritical
reactor. But a barely subcritical reactor isn't all that different from a
critical reactor, except you can turn it off by turning off the accelerator
instead of by moving a control rod.

In short, this is another guy with a solution (the accelerator) looking for a
suitable problem.

(For the record, continuous recycling of actinides is a good idea that turns
"the waste problem" from an unsolvable million-year problem into a manageable
500 year problem. Transmutation of iodine and technetium may be a good idea,
too, because these are the only long term radionuclides that would leach into
water.)

Edit: names are difficult

------
admax88q
I wonder what our attitude towards landfills would be if they were described
the same way that nuclear waste storage facilities are.

> no country can claim to have a comprehensive solution for dealing with its
> toxic waste.

> more than 60 years after getting into nuclear energy, [France] still has no
> definitive way to cope with it.

Sentences like these imply that there's dangerous waste just sitting sitting
around while officials scratch their heads about what to do.

We do have comprehensive solutions. We build giant concrete wells and just put
the waste there, problem solved.

This solution seems to be accepted as reasonable for garbage via landfills,
but for nuclear waste its somehow treated as a workaround until we find some
other magical way to get rid of it.

------
credit_guy
They had me at Cedric Villani

"For Cedric Villani, a French lawmaker and the winner of the Fields Medal—the
Nobel Prize equivalent for mathematics—that’s no reason to give up. “What
Mourou is really after is the accelerator that the laser creates,” he said.
“It’s far-off, but why not?” "

------
nickik
Or we could just use that valuable fuel and put it into nuclear reactors to
make energy and other useful stuff. But that seem to be a totally crazy idea.

~~~
mimixco
Reprocessing is its own nightmare and, I think, only France tries to do it.
All of these processes (the "uranium cycle") are terribly polluting in their
waste outputs and dangerous places for the people who have to work there and
live near them.

~~~
benzofuran
It's like the US doesn't already have a number of remote areas like Hanford,
Oak Ridge, Idaho Falls, the Savannah River Site, Rocky Flats, etc. that are
already set up (and somewhat contaminated already) for handling this sort of
material and process. In reality it's a political nightmare, not a pollution
one.

~~~
mimixco
Hanford and Rocky Flats are two of the most polluted places _on Earth._
Hanford has polluted the Columbia River, a tragedy in itself.

Nuclear is like the insolent child who refuses to clean up his room. There
isn't any cleanup, really. The waste keeps piling up (usually in something
that looks like a swimming pool). It must be attended to by humans for decades
or centuries. And the uranium cycle leaves its dirty underwear all over our
planet.

There is nothing _eco_ about nuclear.

~~~
benzofuran
Thus reprocessing - if Hanford's government contractors could get over the
hump and get the vitrification plant online, it'd be a lot easier to clean up
the waste that's interred in the solid dump and tank farms. And if we didn't
have state governors screaming about "No atoms and radiation in my state!" and
not allowing passage of waste through their state in properly designed
containment and transfer casks, we'd be able to get that waste to a facility
where it can be made safer.

The radiation plume under Hanford is not as terrible as certain sources make
it to be, the same with the contamination of the river. The area around the
reservation itself has led to a recovered and strong population of many
endangered indigenous animals in the area as well.

Regarding Rocky Flats, again, not as terrible as many make it out to be. Once
you factor in living at high elevation there's not a huge increase in overall
exposure.

An important consideration that comes into this is that most of these were
weapons production facilities (dealing with purifying and handling some of the
nastiest material around).

The waste from properly designed and operated power reactors is a much cleaner
and much easier to contain process. Condemning an entire avenue of clean
energy (most of the fuel needs for a century+ which have already been
extracted and refined) because the work done on the technology in the
40's-60's (when we were still figuring out how awful some of the waste is), is
not conducive to progress.

Source: Field engineering on projects at Hanford, Rocky Flats, and Yucca
Mountain

------
amai
Doesn't that need more energy than you generated out of the material in the
first place?

------
xanth
I wonder how much this processes would consume and further reduce the
effective yield.

~~~
turbohz
Energy from other sources, such as renewals could be used. The disposal could
be scheduled when those are generated in excess.

~~~
xanth
Good point, even with non renewable resources excess power is often entirety
wasted when the expected grid consumption is lower than the production.

------
saagarjha
> The idea is to transmute this nuclear waste into new forms of atoms which
> don’t have the problem of radioactivity. What you have to do is to change
> the makeup of the nucleus.

Ok, but what exactly is it transmuting the atom to?

~~~
mimixco
Radioactive materials are dangerous because their subatomic makeup is
unstable, meaning they emit dangerous particles as the atom degrades from the
inside. So it would seem that, in order to fix that, you'd have to re-populate
the innards of the atom with enough protons to make it stable again.

It's worth noting that transmutation is definitely possible. The alchemists of
old would be thrilled to know that we can, in fact, make gold from base metals
(in a nuclear reactor). The problem with that is that the cost of doing so is
worth more than the gold could be sold for.

~~~
saagarjha
I know how radioactivity and transmutation works; my problem is that I don't
actually know how this problem is being "solved".

~~~
mimixco
Neither does the guy who proposed it, lol!

------
croh
is there a way to zap plastic waste in minutes ?

~~~
gambiting
Yes - you can burn it for energy, which is already done in many countries.
With good enough filters it's the best solution to plastic waste that we have.

------
sfink
tl;dr - scientist proposes solution to the nuclear waste problem: alchemy.
With lasers.

------
chmaynard
This is another of many "silver bullet" proposals to reverse the environmental
damage caused by Western civilization. Most of they won't work and will have
unintended consequences. As always, prevention is the best cure.

~~~
mises
Only by Western civilization? China is the largest polluter; India is third.
The West may not be blameless, but it is not solely the fault thereof.

What is your better idea, now that the time for prevention has passed?

~~~
mschuster91
Yeah but most nuclear waste came from the US, UK, France and Russia.

As for a better idea, molten salt/thorium reactors, they can eat at least the
highly dangerous/ultra long half life stuff.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Fast neutron reactors can. Most thorium MSRs are slow neutron reactors and
struggle to transmute significant used nuclear fuel.

~~~
arcticbull
My understanding is that Thorium reactors are far less likely to produce
transuranic elements with long half-lives, and less waste in general (two
order of magnitude). [1] However, it does in fact require some fissile
material such as recycled plutonium, so the two reactor kinds can work in
conjunction to yield a net drop in long-half-life nuclear wastes. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-
based_nuclear_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-
based_nuclear_power)

[2] [http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-
and...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-
generation/thorium.aspx)

~~~
acidburnNSA
Here's the authoritative summary of the capabilities of transmutation and
partitioning [1].

Thorium reactors do indeed produce fewer transuranics, since Thorium-232 is 6
AMUs lower down the chain than Uranium-238. Used nuclear fuel is generally 95%
U-238, 1% Pu and minor actinides, and 4% fission products. If you do chemical
separation to partition the transuranics you can then try to burn them in a
variety of reactors. In slow-neutron reactors using Thorium or Uranium fuel,
they'll burn ok if they're well partitioned. In fast-neutron reactors, you can
burn them with out as aggressive of partitioning. So it's probably easier and
cheaper to reprocess UNF for fast reactors. They're far less sensitive to
neutron-poisons and fertile species (e.g. fission products and U-238).

Any breeder reactor will make 2 orders of magnitude less TOTAL waste than a
non-breeder. Thorium can breed with slow neutrons (which requires continuous
removal of the neutron poisons via online chemistry, usually requiring fluid
fuel). Uranium can breed with fast neutrons in solid fuel or in fluid fuel.
Note I say total waste, not high level waste. High-level waste is proportional
only to the burnup (fraction of the fuel you put in that gets fissioned) and
doesn't include any process waste from before that (e.g. enrichment or
reprocessing waste like U-238).

In a fast neutron uranium-fueled reactor, you can transmute the hell out of
all actinides, leading to waste that decays to low levels in a few hundred
years. See the link below.

Thorium's only true physical advantage is that it alone allows breeding with
slow neutrons, which can be done with low fissile densities. Other than that,
Uranium and Thorium have pretty similar characteristics and capabilities in
advanced reactors.

[1] [https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-
parti...](https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-partitioning-
and-transmutation-in-radioactive-waste-management)

~~~
arcticbull
Thank you! This is why I come here :)

------
hokus
here you go

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R5G5hTC7pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R5G5hTC7pc)

next quest

------
a1e2c3
“A radionuclide is an atom that has excess nuclear energy, making it
unstable.”

This seemed like a vague definition, didn’t sit well with my memory of high
school chemistry and physics. Turns out it’s the first sentence on Wikipedia:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionuclide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionuclide)

Someone at Bloomberg got a little lazy.

~~~
mrpara
It's accurate and not really vague at all, it's just not highschool level
physics. I'll try to explain it in layman terms.

Imagine that you have a bunch of free particles that are not connected to each
other in any way, and are far enough from each other that any interaction
between them (such as electromagnetic fields) is negligible. Ignoring their
own masses, the energy of the system is zero. Now imagine these same
particles, bound together into a single atom.

Obviously, for the atom to be stable, you don't want it to be able to fall
apart on a whim. You want a system where you have to _input_ a lot of energy
for the atom to fall apart. But as we just said, the state where the
constituent particles are separate is the default, zero-energy state.
Therefore, a stable state where you have to add energy to reach the default
free state must actually have negative energy! To be specific, the binding
energy is negative while the energy related to the mass of the particles, i.e.
e=mc2, is positive. The atom is actually lighter than the sum of its parts!

An atom that doesn't have negative binding energy, i.e. has "excess energy",
has nothing binding the constituent particles together, since they have more
than enough energy to go run free on their own. Therefore it is unstable.
Elements with a small enough binding energy, small enough that random
fluctuations can overcome it and make the atoms fall apart, are what we call
radioactive elements.

------
nl
Your periodic reminder that - despite the propaganda campaign run by nuclear
advocates to make it seem like being anti-nuclear is to be anti-science -
nuclear power remains massively expensive and even less safe than people
think.

Here's the most comprehensive peer-reviewed survey around:

 _We summarize the results of a recent statistical analysis of 216 nuclear
energy accidents and incidents (events). The dataset is twice as large as the
previous best available. We employ cost in US dollars as a severity measure to
facilitate the comparison of different types and sizes of events, a method
more complete and consistent that the industry-standard approach. Despite
significant reforms following past disasters, we estimate that, with 388
reactors in operation, there is a 50% chance that a Fukushima event (or more
costly) occurs every 60–150 years. We also find that the average cost of
events per year is around the cost of the construction of a new plant. This
dire outlook necessitates post-Fukushima reforms that will truly minimize
extreme nuclear power risks. Nuclear power accidents are decreasing in
frequency, but increasing in severity._

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629615301067?via%3Dihub)

~~~
Consultant32452
How many Fukushimas will we (society) accept every 150 years in order to stop
climate change? That's really the only question that matters.

~~~
ovi256
An infinity of them, as there are very few deaths attributable to Fukushima,
whereas the coal generation plants spew pollution and radionuclides into the
atmosphere which result in definitely attributable deaths.

~~~
Tepix
I hope noone believes the official number of deaths from nuclear power plant
accidents.

~~~
dagw
So multiply them 5. The argument vs coal still holds.

~~~
Krasnol
How about multiplying it by thousands?

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7151231_Estimates_o...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7151231_Estimates_of_the_cancer_burden_in_Europe_from_radioactive_fallout_from_the_Chernobyl_accident)

[https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-
international/Global/inte...](https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-
international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2006/4/chernobylhealthreport.pdf)

~~~
ovi256
First of all, we were talking about Fukushima, do you have any data about that
?

Anyway, about the first link: Wow, 40000 cancers attribuable in Europe by 2065
to Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history. That sounds bad, until
you finish reading the abstract, where the authors evaluate that impact as
"several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes ...
unlikely that the cancer burden from the largest radiological accident to date
could be detected"

Try to compare with the number attributable to coal pollution now ?

Second link: Greenpeace, overtly being against nuclear power, will bring the
biggest estimates of impact right ? Anyway, what they find is 200k additional
deaths in Russia and Ukraine between 1990 and 2004 (first para page 9). But
around 34M deaths were recorded in those territories in that time. By
Greenpeace's own admission, 0.59% of those are attributable to Chernobyl.

Again, try to compare to coal pollution.

~~~
Krasnol
> First of all, we were talking about Fukushima, do you have any data about
> that ?

How can I? Who would provide that? Especially in Japan where politics and
ignorance go hand in hand with avoidance to even talk about the whole thing or
any disastrous event. The piles of white bags full of earth next to the roads
in the region are the only silent reminders that something really bad happened
there.

> Anyway, about the first link: Wow, 40000 cancers attribuable in Europe by
> 2065 to Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history. That sounds bad,
> until you finish reading the abstract, where the authors evaluate that
> impact as "several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other
> causes

I don't understand what you want to say by that. Do you mean it's okay to
ignore the fallout of this disaster because people die of cancer either way? I
mean seriously. There are radioactively contaminated wild animals running
around in Bavaria's forests today and the accident happened almost 2000km
away. Can you imagine how Europe would look like if one of those old and
leaking reactors in France goes sideways?

There is nothing to compare to besides a nuclear war.

I can understand it's a nice thing with this radioactive accidents. There is
usually a small amount of people who die in a spectacular and direct way while
the rest dies a silent deaths over a long period of time. It's very handy if
you want to push a technology which is too expensive and outdated and the only
other argument out there is the death count of accidents. But this is not the
case. Renewables are coming while even gas is a better solution then building
even one nuclear reactor and most of the people, Governments and energy
providers got the message already. The people never wanted a nuclear waste
dump or reactor in the neighborhood in the first place. The only people left
are those directly profiting from the immense subsidies (nuclear lobby) and
those who fell for the recent artificial hype created by this lobby.

It's time to face the facts: it's dead Jim.

~~~
Consultant32452
Nuclear is not a yes or no question, it's a how much question.
Wind/solar/battery are going to be a huge part of moving us off fossil fuels,
but it doesn't seem likely that they will be sufficient in all cases across
the world. Nuclear seems like the best option available to fill in the gaps.

~~~
Krasnol
You make it look like nuclear is a all case solution across the world. It
never was and it never will be so it's definitely not the best option
available.

And yes it as an yes or no question. Especially if you consider building a new
reactor today and investing into that. It doesn't look like many people
consider to vote "yes" on that now with the alternatives growing. It's also
not a bridge technology. A gas or even oil power plant would be better then a
decade long involvement in a nuclear plant.

It's done and we just can hope now that what's still there won't fall apart
before it gets demolished.

------
mschuster91
> Mourou and Tajima want to create a high-speed laser-driven accelerator to
> produce a beam of protons that can penetrate atoms.

Is it only me who is reminded of Iron Man 2 and the new element created by
that hacked together accelerator in Tony Stark's basement?

As for the topic of the article: I would really find it interesting how much
"bandwidth" (=kg/day) such a setup has and what the energy requirements are.
If the process consumes more than half the energy that the fission process
generated, is it still profitable then? Also, what are the byproducts? I can't
really believe that this leaves stable lead and other things only behind.

------
mimixco
_Nuclear energy has its advocates—it spews little by way of emissions and is
produced relatively cheaply._

Nuclear is anything but cheap. It's a net negative energy source, meaning the
the electricity costs more to produce than it can be sold for. This is why the
industry requires massive subsidies to stay alive. (If I recall correctly, the
last round of subsidy in the US was over $50 billion.)

Nuclear power also requires _massive amounts of carbon,_ as the uranium fuel
must be mined and extensively processed before it is useful. The mining and
milling process is horribly polluting and has ruined the land and water in
many places on Earth.

Now, having said that, I certainly hope this guy can come up with a way to
transmute radioactive elements with lasers. That would be terrific. But I'm
doubtful.

~~~
tlocke
A big problem with nuclear is expense. The figures from France are misleading
because the state and the power companies are deeply entangled financially. A
clearer view is possible in the UK because they have market system, and
subsidies tend to be more transparent. The message from the UK is that nuclear
power is not financially viable, and no nuclear power stations would be built
without government subsidy. The subsidy required is far greater than that
required by renewables. See [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2017/nov/22/hinkley-poin...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/2017/nov/22/hinkley-point-c-subsidy-consumers-mps-contract)

~~~
marcus_holmes
does that take into account that the designs for nuclear reactors are
optimised not for economic production of electricity, but for plutonium output
for nuclear weapons programs?

Not a coincidence that nuclear power plants have been mostly built during the
cold war. Or that nuclear power is inextricably linked with nuclear weapons in
the minds of defence people (see Iran).

However, there's no actual need for this, and a pacifist nuclear power program
could be very economically viable. But there wouldn't be any government
subsidies for it, of course, because it would be useless militarily.

~~~
jabl
> does that take into account that the designs for nuclear reactors are
> optimised not for economic production of electricity, but for plutonium
> output for nuclear weapons programs?

I'm sure it doesn't, because it's patently false.

