“Regardless of whether you are for or against nuclear power, and no matter what you think of nuclear weapons, the radioactive waste is already here, and we have to deal with it… It’s a societal problem that has been handed down to us from our parents’ generation, and we are—more or less—handing it to our children.”
~ Gerald S. Frankel, materials scientist at the Ohio State University
Source: https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
THE PROBLEM - Nuclear Waste Storage:
While the nuclear power industry has provided roughly ten percent of global electrical energy resources in the short-term, the dangers of both the radioactive waste storage problem and the potential for nuclear reactor accidents releasing radioactivity into the environment pose an untenable risk in the long-term. Nuclear waste poses a lethal danger level for many thousands of years. The question of how to effectively store the massive amounts of waste from nuclear power plants and weapons production facilities for such long periods of time is, as yet, still unanswered. An example of the impending catastrophe from ageing underground storage tanks is found at a Hanford, Washington, USA facility that collected waste from 45 years of creating plutonium for nuclear bombs during World War II and the Cold War era.
In Hanford alone, more than 200 million L of this waste still sits after many decades in underground tanks waiting to be processed, according to Thomas M. Brouns, who leads the environmental management sector at nearby Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). About one-third of the nearly 180 storage tanks, many of which long ago outlived their design lives, are known to be leaking, contaminating the subsurface and threatening the nearby Columbia River. Another 136 million L of the stuff awaits processing at the Savannah River [South Carolina] Site.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
In the United States alone, over 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sits in storage, waiting for a solution to this ever-growing problem.
Image Source: https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
A POTENTIAL SOLUTION: Nuclear Waste Remediation
A team of researchers have formalized years of R&D of the SAFIRE hydrogen plasma reactor technology into a commercial venture called Aureon Energy. Currently in the Launch and Commercialization phase, the SAFIRE plasma reactor has already passed initial tests demonstrating that “The SAFIRE team was able to create, control, contain, sustain and repeat-at-will numerous specific plasma regimes. A medium-energy stable plasma was discovered that can transmute elements, releasing unpredicted amounts of energy.”
In fact, the SAFIRE plasma reactor was able to reach “maximum critical temperature” while running at only 7% of the input power needed to reach those temperature levels. The SAFIRE reactor is being commercialized to provide generation of electrical energy via the traditional method used by nuclear power plants – creating enough heat to create steam and turn a turbine. This, in itself, is a vital solution to the problem of ongoing generation of nuclear waste by utilizing the SAFIRE reactor technology that is free from detrimental waste production (or any waste production, for that matter).
Perhaps more importantly, while the reactor uses clean hydrogen to create the plasma modes, the team discovered that “The SAFIRE process can also use radioactive elements as fuel. The elemental transmutation will remediate the radioactive waste back into base elements, rendering it benign.”
Remediation of lethal nuclear waste while generating clean electricity. Certainly one of the highest priority objectives our world can pursue at this time.
Remarkably, the SAFIRE plasma reactor has also repeatedly demonstrated transmutation of elements, effectively transmuting the hydrogen plasma into as many as eighteen elements that were not present in the reactor prior to running the experiments, including creating some Rare Earth elements and Lithium.
Watch a video about the SAFIRE Plasma Reactor here: https://vimeo.com/453152469
AUREON ENERGY will commercialize the SAFIRE technology into four key markets:
- clean energy production,
- heating,
- transmutation of elements (creating Rare Earth Elements),
- remediation of nuclear waste.
Learn more at https://aureon.ca/