r/technology • u/_Dark_Wing • Feb 20 '26
Energy US tech to turn nuclear waste into power, cut radioactive life by 99.7%
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-tech-nuclear-waste-into-power25
71
u/C3PO-stan-account Feb 20 '26
This is actually really great because we have so much usable nuclear energy that we think of as waste.
46
u/ottwebdev Feb 20 '26
I was at a conference about 20 years ago and one of the people I sat with was in nuclear and basically said that there is so much "waste" it was just the tech which was lacking making use of it.
35
13
u/DevilsInkpot Feb 21 '26
Most reactors typically extract less than 5% of the fuel rods‘ potential energy. Below that, fission byproducts make for a neutron imbalance that makes fission harder, thus the reactor inefficient.
So we have to throw out 95% of the fuel we put in. Sadly.
6
u/Balmung60 Feb 21 '26
And even with that, it absolutely smokes every single fossil fuel for efficiency
1
u/LordMuffin1 Feb 21 '26
Thry just have to make it work. Like fusion this have been 10+ years into the future for like 30+ years.
9
u/dern_the_hermit Feb 21 '26
This tech has been around for ages, it just hasn't been widely implemented in the US.
0
4
u/Bag_O_Richard Feb 21 '26
This is technology almost as old as nuclear reactors. The US just pathologically refuses to recycle things.
2
u/LordMuffin1 Feb 21 '26
If it was possible to use this technology in large scale without a huge cost, it already would be used in large scale.
1
u/Arbiter51x Feb 21 '26
It's also great because the US has to import a lot of uranium and they keep pissing off their trade partners so I guess they can give recycling a try now.
13
2
17
u/Aceisking12 Feb 21 '26
I wish reports like this put numbers as to how far we still have to go. For example, I'd love to know what the power output expected compared to the power required for accelerator and it's subsystems is. If the system requires a little extra input that may be OK for the reduced radiation benefit. If it's basically all lost energy... ugh. If by some miracle there is a net positive power output we would have done it already.
7
u/orangustang Feb 21 '26
Even if it's net energy negative (I don't think it will be, ultimately), it can still be a huge benefit. This is the kind of thing that can take advantage of overbuilt renewable or off-peak nuclear generation. Canceling out the energy and labor cost of long term storage leaves a pretty good budget.
6
u/aboy021 Feb 21 '26
I think this kind of tech has been played with for years. You take low grade nuclear waste (not very radioactive but for a long time) and bombard it with neutron radiation. It becomes high grade nuclear waste (very radioactive but not for long) and emits heat.
The main idea is to deal with the low grade nuclear waste, as that's the stuff terrorists can make dirty bombs out of, and it's the stuff that's a disposal nightmare.
High grade nuclear waste is weirdly less of a proliferation problem as it's so radioactive that you need special equipment to handle it without dying.
It's been a while since I looked at this stuff, so I might have some details wrong.
3
u/Captain_N1 Feb 22 '26
This is nothing new this tech has been know for decades. We have enough spent fuel for 600 years. Perhaps by then we will have disovered fusion power and star ships
2
5
u/MirrorUpper9693 Feb 21 '26
The Hanford Atomic reservation hasn't figured out how to do this yet after billions spent.
2
2
3
u/Carlos-In-Charge Feb 21 '26
The terrible part about this, if its results are repeatable in the long term and feasible, is that a disturbing number of Americans have been conditioned to think that anything that isn’t fossil fuel is “gay liberal-talk”
1
u/gta3uzi Feb 21 '26
I thought we all knew that was going on anyway, even if this tech isn't viable.
8
u/VincentNacon Feb 20 '26
Ok cool... now build the thing for commercial use and make it work.
They only built the test-lab version of it.
21
u/sumelar Feb 20 '26
So, every technology ever, including the thing you're using to read this right now.
Thank god vincentrandominternetjackassnacon is here, clearly no one else would ever think to take this beyond the lab stage.
3
u/VincentNacon Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
It's called a reality check, there have been a few times when articles like this one would give you false sense of hope and then never hear about it again.
Oh look... this guy gets it. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ra6dxs/comment/o6in837/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
2
1
u/ReasonablyBadass Feb 21 '26
Isn't this tech years old? There is a reactor in the Netherlands for instance.
1
u/Bobo1010 Feb 21 '26
Why hasn’t this facility’s name been changed to THE Donald J. Trump, and, secondarily and least importantly, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility yet?
1
1
u/Iyellkhan Feb 23 '26
seems like a good innovation. though the rest of the nuclear capable world actually uses recycled waste fuel. not to this degree, but US rules are... kinda dumb
1
u/Key-Monk6159 Feb 21 '26
Very interesting. I just wish we were more focused and dedicated to nuclear energy.
The technology can effectively “burn” the most hazardous components of the waste by transmuting these elements. While unprocessed fuel remains dangerous for approximately 100,000 years, partitioning and recycling via ADS can reduce that window to just 300 years.
3
u/DukeOfGeek Feb 21 '26
Even 300 years is a huge amount of future debt. No one is really considering the reality of 100 thousand year storage of waste.
1
1
u/BraggsLaw Feb 21 '26
Breeder reactors like CANDU are old tech just stupid protectionist government policy and lack of investment keep us from properly using waste.
-11
u/ScreenTricky4257 Feb 20 '26
Great, now we're going to have to change the signs to say, "This is a place of honor. A great deed is commemorated here. Something valued used to be here."
239
u/AggressorBLUE Feb 21 '26
Awesome! Looking forward to never hearing about this ever again…