Scientists plan nuke waste transmutation experiment

Thursday, April 11, 2002 | 9:56 a.m.

A process to convert highly radioactive waste into less dangerous substances, which has been touted as an alternative to dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, may get on a fast track.

Scientists will meet in Europe in June to prepare an experiment in a reactor there to see if transmutation will work in that environment, one of the researchers said this week in Las Vegas.

The approach has the potential to put the process within reach in five years and make it more affordable that early estimates.

The plan, which involves the Energy Department and nuclear experts from 12 European countries, could make transmutation available before a Yucca Mountain repository would open in 2010, said Massimo Salvatores, who was appointed April 2 by the Energy Department to work with the European nations.

If the radioactive elements can be transformed into less harmful materials by transmutation, waste such as plutonium that remains dangerous for 1 million years would become manageable in less than 1,000 years, Massimo said.

Critics have promoted transmutation as a possible alternative to a repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, though the process, if successful, would only reduce the amount of waste that would need to be stored.

But two years ago the Energy Department concluded it would be too expensive to develop the process.

Congress still has earmarked money -- $34 million this fiscal year -- to continue research. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has received $3 million of that for laboratory experiments, project director Anthony Hechanova said.

The new proposal would reduce the cost of research and ultimately the actual transmutation by using existing reactors. The original research relied on plans to build an accelerator, which would speed up the atoms for their transformation. Costs of such an accelerator were estimated at $100 million. The research was expected to take 10 to 20 years.

The cost of using existing reactors could range from $20 million to $80 million, and it could be completed in five to 10 years, Massimo said. The Energy Department has spent $7 billion on nuclear waste studies, almost $5 billion of it at Yucca Mountain.

Massimo said the new approach, while experimental, is viable.

"We know very well the physics of transmutation," Massimo said. "We are not telling fairy tales."

The idea is to blunt the effect of the waste over the long term.

Yucca Mountain, which has been recommended by President Bush and vetoed by Gov. Kenny Guinn, is being designed to last 10,000 years, but the most dangerous radioactive waste remains toxic for 1 million years.

People thousands of years from now could stumble into a repository, releasing radioactive wastes into the air or the water, Massimo said. That is why physicists are working together to find a method that will reduce the radioactivity and its toxic consequences, he said.

Scientists are looking for an available reactor somewhere in Europe, he said, "without starting from scratch."

The United States has 103 operating commercial reactors and Europe has 145 producing electricity. No other country has a repository for high-level nuclear waste on the drawing boards.