Abstract
With the exception of recent progress in Sweden and Finland, traditional and planned high-level nuclear waste processing disposal methods have yet to be successfully implemented on a commercial scale. Failure to solve the high-level waste issue is an impediment to the expansion of nuclear power production particularly in North America and Europe. Given these issues, this paper presents three speculative methods and an accelerator/reactor approach to process high-level nuclear waste. The first speculative approach explores the possibility of incorporating an underground nuclear detonation as a means to process the waste. A second method uses antiprotons and antineutrons to transmute the high-level waste. The third utilizes plasma to obliterate the isotopes comprising the radioactive waste. A somewhat less speculative approach involving nuclear waste transmutation using a reactor or accelerator is also presented. However, this approach has several issues to overcome and is not a likely a near-term solution to the waste disposal/processing issue.
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call