[srp] RE: [ RadSafe ] There's nothing you can do to hurry radioactive decay, the textbooks will tell you, but New Scientist meets a physicist who begs to differ

Wed Oct 25 09:25:29 CDT 2006

Hi Nick

Greetings from BBC (Beautiful British Columbia).

I haven't seen your name for many years and I agree with your analyses
regarding the "waste stream".  However, the risk to worker working with
Th-Nat is higher as thorium is the most toxic radionuclide (about a factor
of 10 above U-Nat) known to the ICRP and NCRP.

Best regards

John

-----Original Message-----
From: srp-uk at yahoogroups.com [mailto:srp-uk at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of
Nick Priest
Sent: October 25, 2006 3:45 AM
To: srp-uk at yahoogroups.com; stewart farber; radsafe at radlab.nl; Fred
Dawson
Cc: Jean-Claude Dehmel
Subject: RE: [srp] RE: [ RadSafe ] There's nothing you can do to hurry
radioactive decay,the textbooks will tell you,but New Scientist meets a
physicist who begs to differ

Alternatively use could use Th fuels (where U-233 is the fuel and Th-232
the breeding material). The only long-lived actinoids produced by this
cycle are thorium and uranium isotopes and protactinium-231 which can be
recycled (with the Th and U) as a breeding material. The only
radionuclides entering the waste stream are fission products - but
remember some of these have very long half lives (e.g. Tc-99 - 200000y).

Prof. Nick Priest, School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex
University, Queensway, Enfield, EN3 4SA, UK
or home address:
Sandacres, Gainfield, Buckland, Oxon., SN7 8QQ, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1367 870 300 (Home)
Tel: +44 (0)77900 24914 (Cell)
Tel: +44 (0)20 8411 5229 (Work)
Fax: +44 (0)1367 870 586 (Home)
Fax: +44 (0)20 8411 6580 (Work)
Alternative Email: prof.nick.priest at gmail.com

-----Original Message-----
From: srp-uk at yahoogroups.com [mailto:srp-uk at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of John R Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 7:34 PM
To: stewart farber; radsafe at radlab.nl; srp-uk at yahoogroups.com; Fred
Dawson
Cc: Jean-Claude Dehmel
Subject: [srp] RE: [ RadSafe ] There's nothing you can do to hurry
radioactive decay,the textbooks will tell you, but New Scientist meets a
physicist who begs to differ

Stewart et al

The term "long-term nuclear waste" is Technically Enhanced Naturally
Occurring Radioactive Material, and is discussed in detail in the soon
(hopefully) to be published ANSI Standard N13.53.

Jean-Claude may be able to update us.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl]On
Behalf Of stewart farber
Sent: October 24, 2006 10:08 AM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl; srp-uk at yahoogroups.com; Fred Dawson
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] There's nothing you can do to hurry radioactive
decay,the textbooks will tell you, but New Scientist meets a physicist
who begs to differ

Hello all,

The posting by Fred Dawson [see below] with the link to New Scientist
magazine brings up a rather obvious and basic way in which radioactive
decay [for the longest lived nuclides residual from a first pass thru a
nuclear reactor] can be "hurried" which is completly non-debatable. It's
just a matter of perspective.

Namely, if the spent fuel from the first cycle of power generation is
reprocessed and the residual long-lived U-235 [and U-238] and Pu-239 is
removed from the spent fuel, and passed thru subsequent power generation
cycles, the longest lived radionuclides in nuclear waste  will be
transmuted into much shorter-lived breakdown products, mainly Sr-90 and
Cs-137.

So one can certainly view the second, and subsequent power generation
cycles in conventional reactors as simply the operation of nuclear
reactors we can reasonably term "transmutation reactors" vs. power
reactors, which happen to use reprocessed fuel derived fissile material.
The not insignificant amount of electricity from these "transmutation
reactors"  is merely a modest side-benefit :-) of huge ecomonic benefit
to society, while reducing the issue of long-term nuclear waste storage
dramatically in terms of the time span of concern, and volume of the
waste, in managing the nuclear waste products.

The "transmutation reactor"  approach requires no "New Science" and
saves cooling nuclear waste to absolute zero as suggested should the
claimed technique work in some unexpected way to speed up nuclear decay.
I'd hate to see the energy bill for cooling thousands of tons of spent
nuclear fuel to absolute zero!!!

Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
[203] 367-0791 [office]

============================================
From: "Fred Dawson" <fd003f0606 at blueyonder.co.uk>
writes [in part]:

To: <srp-uk at yahoogroups.com>; <radsafe at radlab.nl>
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 1:13 PM

> There's nothing you can do to hurry radioactive decay, the textbooks
> will tell you, but New Scientist meets a physicist who begs to differ
>
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19225741.100-halflife
-her
esy-accelerating-radioactive-decay.html
>
............... And there's little we can do about radioactive waste
> from nuclear reactors that will be a health hazard for generations to
> come. Radioactivity cannot be tamed; all we can do is bundle the waste

> somewhere safe and wait for it to decay away. So it takes some nerve
> to say otherwise, and suggest that there are, after all, ways to speed

> up radioactive decay.
>

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