Re: DOE plans to "burn-up" nuclear waste

["Jerry Cohen" <jjcohen@prodigy.net>]

I can recall at least three national conferences (1975, 1982,& 1986) on the
" transmutation of nuclear waste". In each case, it was generally concluded
that the process ,even if technologically successful, would accomplish
little  toward solving waste management problems, and was basically a dumb
idea.  Apparently , the AEC/ERDA/DOE organization has little or no
institutional memory.   jjcohen@prodigy.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Jacobus, John (OD) <JJacobus@ors.od.nih.gov>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 7:10 AM
Subject: DOE plans to "burn-up" nuclear waste


>I saw this in passing.  It looks like DOE is looking for another mission.
Can
>one assume that the politics in the use of plutonium will be a "hurdle?"
>
>-- John
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ArcaMax [mailto:ezines@arcamax.com]
>Sent: March 14, 2000 12:27 AM
>To: Jacobus, John (OD)
>Subject: ArcaMax Science News for March 14, 2000
>. . .
>
>   BURNING NEPTUNIUM, AND AMERICIUM, TOO
>   By 2015, according to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S.  nuclear
>power industry will have created about 70,000 tons of high-level nuclear
>waste. One expensive, yet attractive way of treating it would be to
>transform much of it, using "accelerated transmutation of wastes," or ATW.
>ATW could potentially take that amount of uranium, plutonium, americium,
>neptunium and curium, and convert it into a small amount that needs
>disposal, and much more material that is stable. 95 percent of reactor
>waste is uranium, which does not require long-term storage. Using a
>waste-burner powered by the plutonium and containing a proton beam, the
>more radioactive parts of the waste would capture neutrons and be converted
>into stable, non-hazardous materials, the lab says. And the weapons-grade
>plutonium would be destroyed in the process, too. Los Alamos would like to
>create a prototype facility in the next five years, if cost and other
>hurdles can be overcome.
>. . .
>--
>Copyright 2000 by United Press International.
>All rights reserved.
>--
>
>
>"Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has
to eat
>them. "
>Adlai Stevenson
>
>John Jacobus, MS
>Health Physicist
>National Institutes of Health
>Radiation Safety Branch, Building 21
>21 Wilson Drive, MSC 6780
>Bethesda, MD  20892-6780
>Phone: 301-496-5774      Fax: 301-496-3544
>jjacobus@exchange.nih.gov (W)
>jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
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