UNLV could get funds for nuke research

Friday, Jan. 19, 2001 | 11:11 a.m.

UNLV is poised to receive millions in research funds if it becomes a core institution in the search for a way to reduce deadly radioactive wastes, scientists said Thursday.

Nuclear scientists estimate that an accelerator could be built in less than 10 years that would be able to reduce radioactive toxicity from thousands of years to 200 years or less, Thomas Ward, Department of Energy project manager from Washington, D.C., said on Thursday.

Ward and 25 other scientists from universities and DOE national laboratories discussed research necessary for transforming nuclear wastes, called transmutation, Thursday at a daylong seminar at UNLV's Harry Reid Environmental Research Center.

The United States is studying Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for a possible repository for the tons of nuclear waste from commercial reactors and nuclear weapons activities that are accumulating across the country. The repository, if it is built, would hold up to 77,000 tons and could open by 2010.

The technology would not replace the need for a repository, but an accelerator would cut the storage time down to 200 years or less and pay for itself by producing power, Ward said.

Denis Beller is coordinating the advanced accelerator project from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico with universities such as UNLV, Purdue and University of Michigan.

"This entire project has been put on the fast track," Beller said.

But the accelerator is competing for funds with the DOE's nuclear waste budget for studying and recommending Yucca Mountain, making it controversial.

The research and development of accelerators that could be built regionally and used to handle reactor wastes is expected to take 10 years and cost $570 million.

Last year scientists feared it would take 35 years and cost billions, Beller said. "We just didn't believe we could sustain congressional interest that long," he said.

International research over the past year has resulted in advances that have reduced that time frame significantly, he said.

Sens. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, and Harry Reid, D-Nev., secured $34 million for research this year. UNLV received $3 million of that money.

"We have to focus very quickly, and that is where UNLV can help," Beller said.

The funds will buy a lot of research opportunities for students and faculty, said principal accelerator investigator Anthony Hechanova, a nuclear engineer at the Harry Reid Center.

Next year, if the program wins congressional support, UNLV could receive more than $4 million and begin purchasing equipment to study chemical and material reactions under intense heat, Hechanova said.

A pilot accelerator could be built at the Nevada Test Site or one of the other DOE national labs, the scientists said.

UNLV nuclear engineer Bill Culbreth and College of Science visiting professor Malcolm Nicol are on the university's team to coordinate accelerator research.

If UNLV receives the extra money next year, more faculty would be hired to support accelerator research, Hechanova said.

Los Alamos scientists have teamed up with researchers in France, Sweden and Russia -- countries that also have accumulating nuclear waste -- to experiment with accelerators.

The major problem facing scientists is how to build an accelerator that will handle the heat of radioactive materials as they are bombarded by atomic particles, Los Alamos expert Stuart Maloy said.

Radioactivity tends to corrode the metal of accelerators when temperatures reach three to five times the boiling point.