Particle accelerators have been for various research areas, but the U.S. Department of Energy is now having its Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), based in Newport News, Virginia, look into using cutting edge particle accelerator-driven systems (ADS) to generate electricity from nuclear waste, while also vastly reducing its storage time. TJNAF, which specializes in particle accelerator technologies, announced two modest grants for them to lead the research projects.
Rongli Geng, the head of TJNAF’s Science & Technology R&D division, said: “Based on our own success in developing cutting-edge accelerator technologies to enable scientific discoveries, we believe that there is a contribution we can make with the experience we have gained over the last few decades.” He is a principal investigator on both grants. TNJAF’s announcement reported: “According to ARPA-E, unprocessed used nuclear fuel ‘reaches the radiotoxicity of natural uranium ore after approximately 100,000 years of cooling. Partitioning and recycling of uranium, plutonium, and minor actinide content of used nuclear fuel can dramatically reduce this number to around 300 years.’” The “grants are aimed at enabling this recycling effort, so that it can be applied to ‘the entirety of the U.S. commercial used nuclear fuel stockpile within 30 years.’”
TJNAF said that this “work is aimed at moving toward economic viability of transmutation of nuclear waste.... ADS can transform highly radioactive and long-lived nuclear waste into less radioactive, shorter-lived materials, while also producing additional electricity.” Basically, high-energy protons can be made to release neutrons directed at spent nuclear fuel. Then, Geng said: “These neutrons will interact with these unwanted isotopes and convert them into more manageable isotopes that you can either try out for some beneficial use or bury underground. Instead of having a lifetime of 100,000 years in storage, for example, you can shorten the storage years down to 300.”
The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at TJNAF was the first large-scale installation of superconducting radiofrequency technology back in 1995 and it remains the state of the art.
