Easy way to eliminate nuke waste

[Kylon]

I have an idea on how to easily eliminate nuclear waste.

 

The hotter things are, the faster the emit radiation. The more radiation they emit, the less radiation left to emit.

 

Basically, if we got a big insulated tungsten pot, put a bunch of radioactive waste in there, heated it to 2,500 degrees, we could probably generate more energy from it than we lost.

 

I am a creative problem solver, and I am highly uneducated, but do you think this has merit?

 

Instead of taking 10,000 years to eliminate, it could take 10-1000 years to eliminate the radiation, meanwhile a energy surplus could be generated.

[Radical Edward]

somewhere along the line you are making a fundamental misunderstanding, perhaps several.

 

radioactive things generate heat as a result of their breakdown, the breakdown however is not caused by the heat. a lump of Uranium at zero degrees celcius will decay at the same rate as a lump at 500 degrees. Radioactive decay is, in short, not catalysed by heat.

Furthermore, the interactions are nuclear ones, and most of the "heat" that you impose on a body is stored in the electrons surrounding it, in the form of excited modes and so on.

[Kylon]

Then how do nukes work? They pressurize, and heat nuclear fuels. That causes a reaction to go off all at once. Am I wrong?

[superchump]

Originally posted by Kylon

Then how do nukes work? They pressurize, and heat nuclear fuels. That causes a reaction to go off all at once. Am I wrong?

 

Yeah. Nukes work by inducing an extreme example of supercritical fission in the fission material. Basically, the denser the material fissioning, the more likely a neutron will produce a fission. That's why a mass of plutonium is crushed into a denser sphere or uranium slugs are slammed together; there is a high probability that there is more than one neutron producing another fission on average. The reaction becomes out of control because there isn't a moderator to slow the neutrons.

[Kylon]

Then they could use, Uranium 238 as a fuel source. I read on encarta that it doesn't fission easily, but it does fission. If this is the case, then I would think that if you compressed it down really small then you could fission it.

 

Just applying science to technical applications

[JaKiri]

Originally posted by Kylon

Then they could use, Uranium 238 as a fuel source. I read on encarta that it doesn't fission easily, but it does fission. If this is the case, then I would think that if you compressed it down really small then you could fission it.

 

To create some higher level radioactive waste! Good plan there!

 

U238 has a half life in the region of 500 million years, iirc (even if I don't, I do know it's HUGE) and is EXCEPTIONALLY low level waste.

 

I could carry a block of it around with my in my pocket and not worry about it at all.

 

(Ingesting it is another matter though, and not only because if memory serves it's another one of those poisonous heavy metals)

[Glider]

Probably wouldn't want to carry it about in your hip pocket though...probably better in your jacket pocket I think..

[JaKiri]

It doesn't really matter, as the main products are Alpha sources anyway.

 

http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/radon/chain.htm

 

4,460,000,000 years for the half life of 238 btw, I was out by a factor of 10.