Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
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Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#2This 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.
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#3This 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.
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?
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#4This 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.
This is about nuclear waste that came from power plants that massively helped the amount of greenhouse gases we emit (cause the alternatives were fossil fuelled plants) so I’m not sure what you mean exactly
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#5> 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?
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#6> 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.
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#7This 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.
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?
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.
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#8Nuclear 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.
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#9> 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?
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.
Re: Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest
#10Nuclear 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 requi…
Got a source? I'd read the EROI of nuclear is quite high.