Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Hadrian on 10/04/2006 19:56:29

Title: Lasers tackle radioactive waste
Post by: Hadrian on 10/04/2006 19:56:29

i came asross this waht do you think?

A 360 J laser pulse transmutes an isotope with a half-life of 15.7 million years into a lighter isotope with a half-life of just 25 minutes.

One of the biggest challenges facing the nuclear industry today is the storage and disposal of waste that will remain radioactive for millions of years. One approach to this problem involves bombarding the waste with neutrons to speed up the decay of long-lived isotopes into nuclei with much shorter half-lives. However, physicists in the UK and Germany have now demonstrated a new laser-driven approach to "transmutation" by converting iodine-129, which has a half-life of 15.7 million years, into iodine-128. The half-life of this lighter isotope is just 25 minutes (J. Phys. D to be published).

http://optics.org/articles/news/9/8/12/1

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Title: Re: Lasers tackle radioactive waste
Post by: another_someone on 10/04/2006 21:03:36

quote:

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Originally posted by Hadrian
i came asross this waht do you think?

A 360 J laser pulse transmutes an isotope with a half-life of 15.7 million years into a lighter isotope with a half-life of just 25 minutes.

One of the biggest challenges facing the nuclear industry today is the storage and disposal of waste that will remain radioactive for millions of years. One approach to this problem involves bombarding the waste with neutrons to speed up the decay of long-lived isotopes into nuclei with much shorter half-lives. However, physicists in the UK and Germany have now demonstrated a new laser-driven approach to "transmutation" by converting iodine-129, which has a half-life of 15.7 million years, into iodine-128. The half-life of this lighter isotope is just 25 minutes (J. Phys. D to be published).

http://optics.org/articles/news/9/8/12/1

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Obviously, very early development, that may yet go nowhere – on the other hand, if the principle can be made to work on an industrial scale, then would it not be possible for use in transmuting other isotopes as well – e.g. for nuclear enrichment?

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George

Title: Re: Lasers tackle radioactive waste
Post by: Hadrian on 11/04/2006 20:58:35

Thanks George  

Have you or anyone come across this before or any work being done like it?

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Title: Re: Lasers tackle radioactive waste
Post by: realmswalker on 09/05/2006 05:21:36

well the real question is: How much energy does this take?
If it takes more energy than the nuclear reactor produced in the first place, then chances are, it wont work very well

Title: Re: Lasers tackle radioactive waste
Post by: Cut Chemist on 16/05/2006 04:23:13

Are these isotopes man made or harvested from the earth??

deuterium (hydrogen 2)
carbon 13 or 14
phosphorus 31
nitrogen 15

I use these for NMR spectroscopy and I was wondering why they were so expensive???