2 nuke waste articles - Europe and USA

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Wednesday January 13 6:33 PM ET 

Germany Bans Nuclear Waste Cargo

BERLIN (AP) - Partners in Germany's coalition government 
reached an agreement Wednesday to ban the practice of sending 
spent nuclear fuel out of the country for reprocessing.  

The agreement, part of the government's plan to end the use of 
nuclear power in Germany, will take effect in 2000 under a 
compromise between the coalition's main party, the Social 
Democrats, and its junior partner, the environmentalist Greens.  

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a Green, had wanted the 
shipments to stop immediately, but Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder 
nixed that plan.  

Trittin said the ban would begin one year after parliament makes it 
law, which is expected to occur Jan. 27. The day before that, the 
government begins talks with Germany's energy industry on setting 
a timetable for shutting down the country's 19 nuclear plants.  

``We have accomplished what we set out to do,'' Trittin said after 
the meeting.

The Greens argue transporting the nuclear material is potentially 
dangerous and that the reprocessing into usable fuel is 
unnecessary because Germany's nuclear plants are to be shut 
down anyway.  

They want plant operators to store the spent fuel on site in 
temporary facilities until a solution for a permanent storage site is 
identified.  

Environmental activists protested outside the site of the 
government talks, carrying torches and signs pleading for the ban 
to take effect now. ``One more year is one year too many,'' said 
one sign. ``No foreign compromises, Mr. Schroeder,'' said another.

----------

Thursday January 14 2:59 AM ET 

Physicists Race For Way To Destroy Nuclear Waste

LONDON (Reuters) - European and American physicists are in a 
race to come up with a viable solution to destroy hazardous 
radioactive waste with a neutron treatment called transmutation, 
the New Scientist reported Wednesday.  

The magazine said transmutation might destroy the existing 
inventory of deadly plutonium, minimize the threat of nuclear
terrorism and might even help to generate electricity.

``Add a neutron or two to some of the most dangerous radioactive 
elements and you destroy then,'' the weekly said. ''Plutonium, for 
example, is split asunder, while the most intractable fission 
products are rendered harmless.''   

Physicists believe that transmutation can shorten to 15.8 seconds 
from 200,000 years the time it takes for one of the most noxious 
constituents of radioactive waste, technetium-99, to decay to half 
its initial radioactive level.  

Technetium-99 is a fission product of uranium and reactors around 
the world spew out about six tons of it each year. Because it 
dissolves easily in water, it accumulates in the food chain. 
Concentrations of the product have risen 100-fold in some parts of 
the ocean since the 1960s because of nuclear policy.  

Despite some skepticism, the Spanish, French and Italian 
governments are about to receive a report outlining the details
needed to build a prototype transmutation reactor, the magazine 
reported, while the U.S. Department of Energy is plowing
$4.0 million into its own research and development.

With new research into a theory that had been rejected as 
technologically and economically unfeasible, European physicists 
are also now trying to produce cheap power on top of destroying 
plutonium and reducing hazardous waste.  

Their proposed machine has been dubbed the ``Energy Amplifier'' 
by its designer, the Nobel prize winning physicist Carlo Rubbia.  

But so far, all research is at an early stage. Despite being bullish, 
experts only have a simulation and a series of experiments on
isolated aspects of a system.

And observers remain cautious. Richard Bush, the fuel processing 
manager at Britain's AEA Technology science and engineering 
business, said too many untested claims were being made. Others 
say technically the process is on the ``edge of the possible'' but 
still question whether it makes economic sense. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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