Volume of nuclear waste could be reduced by 90 per cent
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/nuclear-research-sheffield-university-fukushima-1.324913
picture from ourenergypolicy.org
In this article, engineers from University of Sheffield found a way to reduce the volume of certain nuclear waste (plutonium contaminated waste). By taking the waste and mixing it with furnace slag at high temperatures, they are able to trap the radioactive plutonium in a glass and remove the non radioactive portions at the same time. They (the engineers) mention that the common wastes of this type are "...filters, used personal protective equipment (PPE) and decommissioning waste such as metals and masonry." (University of Sheffield). This means the main contribution to the volume of this waste is actually non hazardous materials, so just separating the plutonium from the materials would reduce the volume of waste.
Unfortunately, I notice that this seems to only apply to plutonium, and the test that these researchers did used Cerium instead of plutonium. So some nuclear waste can be made smaller, but there's no guarantee for other wastes, and they still need to test if their method works with actual plutonium.
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