posted on Dec, 28 2006 @ 01:05 AM
Well
supercheeter nuclear reprocessing concentrates usable products contained within nuclear waste for reuse. But that’s
not the issue
I'm trying to address.
Mankind has a surplus of materials like plutonium but the issue behind the surplus isn’t really to do with how pure the plutonium is; rather that
there is simply more of it than we need for things like specialist reactors or indeed nuclear bombs. So instead a lot of hot radioactive material is
sitting in storage doing absolutely nothing useful (other than decay).
And even if the surplus of suitable radioactive materials did become an issue of purity there is still little reason why it could not sit in my decay
room (at temporarily) until there is a specific and fast approaching time to reprocess it.
My idea evolves around storing high level radioactive material (which has to be stored somewhere anyway) inside a “Decay Room” as explained in my
publication my objective is to insulate this room; allow it to heat up to water boiling point (or slightly beyond) for electricity generation.
One of the key features of
my Decay Room is that it is not a nuclear reactor. This avoids a host of safety, public relations and cost issues.
Instead it is simply an insulated room in which (shielded) nuclear waste decays naturally.
It’s occurred to me that a power company running the set up described in my idea publication would not need to own the nuclear waste it uses (and
hence also it’s the long term liability). Instead it could merely lease the stuff over a number of years; and because there is plenty of hot high
level nuclear waste which would not normally be used for anything; I would imagine that the cost leasing nuclear would be very low.
So I know what you mean
supercheetah about reprocessing being a way of concentrating waste.
I agree 100% about U.S reprocessing laws being completely outdated; and to my surprise it looks as though Bush is going to leave the White House
without addressing this issue.
It’s a little known fact but using technologies already in existence we could burn up almost all of our nuclear waste within 300 years:
www.npl.washington.edu...
(Trouble is the best approaches require reprocessing).