Advanced technology for nuke waste still years off

Tuesday, May 9, 2000 | 10:59 a.m.

Technology that could dramatically reduce the harmful effects of radioactive waste may not be available before a proposed repository to store the nation's nuclear trash is scheduled to be built at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The technology is called transmutation, and using it, scientists at Los Alamos, N.M., and other national labs have discovered a way to burn plutonium and other extremely radioactive elements.

It won't eliminate the need for a repository, but the process reduces the volume and intensity of toxic radiation so that smaller amounts of the wastes will need to be stored for about 300 years, as opposed to 77,000 tons being stored for a minimum of 10,000 years.

"Personally, I don't think it will come in time for Yucca Mountain," Abe Van Luik, DOE Yucca Mountain Project technical coordinator, said. "But if it does, then put the first one at Yucca."

Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied for the highly radioactive wastes that need to be removed from 73 commercial reactors and defense sites. If it passes scientific muster, a repository could open as soon as 2010.

Some scientists who have worked on transforming toxic radioactive matter into something less harmful discussed the latest advances at a workshop at UNLV on Monday.

By using accelerators to convert the wastes to something less harmful, scientists can avoid a full-scale nuclear reaction, according to the transmutation project chief, James Bresee. There is a remote possibility that storage of 77,000 tons of waste at a single site could create such a reaction, Los Alamos scientists have said.

The scientists reported they expect to have a full-size machine operating in 20 years. In less than 50 years accelerators reducing dangerous radioactive wastes could be operating at eight sites nationwide, they said.

That would be in ample time to develop a much safer waste process if a new breed of nuclear reactors are in use in 30 years or so, Van Luik said. Transmutation would prevent the pileup of nuclear wastes at the plants that exists today.

But it doesn't help the pressing need now. The current method of storing spent nuclear fuel in containers under water at the power plants is a catastrophe waiting to happen within the next 30 years, Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, said.

The cladding covering nuclear fuel rods at the sites will rot and release radiation into the environment in the next three decades, he predicted.

"We have to do something," Richter said.

He added that developing a safer way to deal with nuclear wastes might help the public accept advanced reactor designs to produce more nuclear power. Nuclear reactors supply roughly 20 percent of U.S. electricity today.

The key to developing the technology is money, the scientists said.

"It's a great dream," Richter said. "Can you afford it?"

Congress gave the DOE $9 million this year to begin exploring accelerator technology developed at Los Alamos. It will take $187 million of taxpayers' money and 20 years to finish research and build the first full-scale transmutation machine, according to a DOE report in November. The Clinton administration nixed any transmutation research funds for next year, but Congress has not finished approving a 2001 budget.

Transmutation promises not only to reduce nuclear waste, but to prevent people such as terrorists from trying to snatch it, Greg Van Tuyle of Los Alamos said.

Nevada's elected officials have been fighting a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain since it was singled out by Congress in 1987. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., sent representatives to the workshop.

Berkley said she soon plans to introduce legislation designed to continue studies of advanced nuclear waste technologies "and stop the ill-conceived Yucca Mountain project."

Mary Manning covers environmental issues for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4065 or by e-mail at manning@lasvegassun.com.