Post by Slinger on Nov 27, 2019 16:32:25 GMT
Lasers could cut lifespan of nuclear waste from "a million years to 30 minutes," says Nobel laureate...
Gérard Mourou has already won a Nobel for his work with fast laser pulses.
If he gets pulses 10,000 times faster, he says he can modify waste on an atomic level.
If no solution is found, we're already stuck with some 22,000 cubic meters of long-lasting hazardous waste.
Whatever one thinks of nuclear energy, the process results in tons of radioactive, toxic waste no one quite knows what to do with. As a result, it's tucked away as safely as possible in underground storage areas where it's meant to remain a long, long time: The worst of it, uranium 235 and plutonium 239, have a half life of 24,000 years.
That's the reason eyebrows were raised in Europe — where more countries depend on nuclear energy than anywhere else — when physicist Gérard Mourou mentioned in his wide-ranging Nobel acceptance speech that lasers could cut the lifespan of nuclear waste from "a million years to 30 minutes," as he put it in a followup interview with The Conversation.
STORY
Gérard Mourou has already won a Nobel for his work with fast laser pulses.
If he gets pulses 10,000 times faster, he says he can modify waste on an atomic level.
If no solution is found, we're already stuck with some 22,000 cubic meters of long-lasting hazardous waste.
Whatever one thinks of nuclear energy, the process results in tons of radioactive, toxic waste no one quite knows what to do with. As a result, it's tucked away as safely as possible in underground storage areas where it's meant to remain a long, long time: The worst of it, uranium 235 and plutonium 239, have a half life of 24,000 years.
That's the reason eyebrows were raised in Europe — where more countries depend on nuclear energy than anywhere else — when physicist Gérard Mourou mentioned in his wide-ranging Nobel acceptance speech that lasers could cut the lifespan of nuclear waste from "a million years to 30 minutes," as he put it in a followup interview with The Conversation.
STORY
