The invention could help combat global warming by making nuclear power cleaner and thus a more viable replacement of carbon-heavy energy sources, such as coal.
"We have created a way to use fusion to relatively inexpensively destroy the waste from nuclear fission," says Mike Kotschenreuther, senior research scientist with the Institute for Fusion Studies (IFS) and Department of Physics. "Our waste destruction system, we believe, will allow nuclear power-a low carbon source of energy-to take its place in helping us combat global warming."
Toxic nuclear waste is stored at sites around the U.S. Debate surrounds the construction of a large-scale geological storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which many maintain is costly and dangerous. The storage capacity of Yucca Mountain, which is not expected to open until 2020, is set at 77,000 tons. The amount of nuclear waste generated by the U.S. will exceed this amount by 2010.
Not a set back at all. In the near term we will continue putting spent fuel in Dry Cask Storage on-site;
outcast wrote:Those places were getting filled up, which is why Yucca mountain was needed.
outcast wrote:I knew a guy who is studying to be a nuclear engineer in university. He was running a calibration test on the external radiation sensor and noticed there was some radiation that couldn't be accounted for by background radiation. A thorough sweep of the university reactor's containment vessel revealed there were no leaks, but the source of the extra radiation was a bottle of water someone left in the sun outside.
Plantagenet wrote:Nuclear waste is a giant potential energy source, not only for reprocessing and reuse in nuclear power plants, but also as a power source for electric generation directly from solid state electric cells, similar to solar radiation cells.
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