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Chemists have found a new use for the waste product of nuclear power - transforming an unused stockpile into a versatile compound which could be used to create valuable commodity chemicals as well as new energy sources.
Depleted uranium (DU) is a radioactive by-product from the process used to create nuclear energy. Many fear the health risks from DU, as it is either stored in expensive facilities or used to manufacture controversial armour-piercing missiles.
But, in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Professor Geoff Cloke, Professor Richard Layfield and Dr Nikolaos Tsoureas, all at the University of Sussex, have revealed that DU could, in fact, be more useful than we might think.
By using a catalyst which contains depleted uranium, the researchers have managed to convert ethylene (an alkene used to make plastic) into ethane (an alkane used to produce a number of other compounds including ethanol).
Their work is a breakthrough that could help reduce the heavy burden of large-scale storage of DU, and lead to the transformation of more complicated alkenes.
Prof Layfield said: "The ability to convert alkenes into alkanes is an important chemical reaction that means we may be able to take simple molecules and upgrade them into valuable commodity chemicals, like hydrogenated oils and petrochemicals which can be used as an energy source.
"The fact that we can use depleted uranium to do this provides proof that we don't need to be afraid of it as it might actually be very useful for us."
Journal Reference:
Nikolaos Tsoureas, Laurent Maron, Alexander F. R. Kilpatrick, Richard A. Layfield, F. Geoffrey N. Cloke. Ethene Activation and Catalytic Hydrogenation by a Low-Valent Uranium Pentalene Complex. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2019; 142 (1): 89 DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b11929
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @03:05AM (15 children)
In exactly what sense is depleted uranium meaningfully radioactive? It's produced by stripping out as much of the fissile U-235 as possible, meaning it's almost pure U-238.
And just to put that in proper context - even the more volatile U-235 has a half life of over 700 million years, while U-238 has a half-life of almost 4.5 *billion* years. And of course, the longer the half-life, the less radioactive something is - at those timescales radioactivity is pretty close to nonexistent. Dangerous radioactivity is associated with things whose half-lives are measured in minutes to decades, not ice-ages.
Uranium is dangerous - but that's because it's a toxic heavy metal, not because it's radioactive. U-235 will become radioactive if you put enough of it in one place to sustain a fission reaction, but U-238 won't even do that.
(Score: 2, Funny) by RandomFactor on Monday January 13 2020, @03:14AM
Also in common usage the depleted form can cause negative impacts and has been known to damage equipment and cause injury.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Funny) by Mer on Monday January 13 2020, @08:42AM
Radium has a half life of 1600 years and it's deadly. That's lower than 700 million years but way above minutes as you put it. But radium has a nasty habit of going in your bones and staying there.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday January 13 2020, @09:53AM (3 children)
Half-life is one thing, quantity is another. If you surround yourself with enough U-238, you will most likely *not* be happy.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday January 13 2020, @01:30PM (2 children)
That's called a fallout shelter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:44PM
That's something else, isn't it?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/588430/Fallout_Shelter/ [steampowered.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 13 2020, @04:27PM
That's called a tomb.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @11:28AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @11:34AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @02:55PM (1 child)
Yet you can hold a survey meter over a banana or purified potassium and hear it click away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:34PM
We are good at detecting radiation. In comparison, we are completely blind to chemical spills.
Furthermore, just because it clicks, doesn't mean it clicks because of the banana. We live in a soup of radiation. You'd be surprised how much radiation is passing through your body every day.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @12:13PM (1 child)
U238 is perfectly good fissile material, at least when it comes to energy production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238#Nuclear_energy_applications [wikipedia.org]
Also, the word you are looking for is "chain reaction" not "radioactive".
You are wrong considering this non-existent. It's very existent. You are forgetting Avogadro's number, perhaps? There are many atoms in just a kilogram.
Also, the word you are looking for here is not "radioactive" but "cold" vs. "hot". Cold radioactive material would be like Uranium 238 or 235 or Potassium-40. A hot radioactive material would be something like Cesium-135.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @03:37PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238 [wikipedia.org]
U-238 is *fertile*, not fissile - meaning it can be "bred" into fissile material, but cannot itself sustain a fission chain reaction, so you need a breeder reactor to sustain the reaction.
>Also, the word you are looking for is "chain reaction" not "radioactive".
Nope, I chose my words carefully, and that's an almost completely different concept. Radioactivity discusses how much and what kinds of radiation is leaving something - possibly due to fission, but usually not. The existence of a chain reaction tells you that the radiation is of a quantity and kind sufficient to sustain fission. U-238's is categorically not, as it's decay into Th-234 doesn't eject any free neutrons with which to breed Pu-239, much less trigger a chain reaction - so not even an infinite volume of U-238 could sustain a chain reaction
> You are forgetting Avogadro's number, perhaps? There are many atoms in just a kilogram.
There are. But our environment is rich in ambient radiation anyway - the question is whether the radiation coming off a chunk of U-238 is sufficient to notably increase your radiation exposure. And while I'm not confident enough in my reasoning to want to sit in a uranium vault without first actually measuring that, I'm pretty sure it would be safe.
Consider - U-238's entire decay chain to stable Pb-206 is all alpha and beta decay - neither of which can cause chain reactions, and both of which can be reliably stopped by a thin sheet of foil. Meaning that it shouldn't make any difference to your radiation exposure whether you're standing next to a thin sheet of U-238 foil, or a meter-thick slab of it - the only radiation that reaches you will be that which is actually originating in the outmost foil-thin layer. (Though the slab would be at least slightly warmer thanks to all the alpha and beta radiation energy being converted to heat within it)
As for "hot" and "cold" radioactive material - I think you're basically correct in concept, though I think your terminology is off. I could easily see such terms being common "slang" in the industry, but a quick search turns up no reference to them, the "official" terms appear to me "high level", "low-level", etc.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday January 13 2020, @01:49PM (1 child)
Yeah, there is climate change level of science in this summary. Process used to create nuclear energy? Far as I know all DU comes from enrichment centrifuges. Like those Iranian ones that got bricked by exploiting a siemens zeroday. Armour-piercing missiles? I never heard of a DU missile, maybe a rocket grenade? They use it primarily in bullets, and having DU doesn't make it AP, having a steel core makes it AP rounds. You can legally own DU bullets, but not AP.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 13 2020, @09:01PM
There are armor piercing DU shells. Besides being dense, it is used as it is self sharpening and flammable. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Ammunition [wikipedia.org]
While legal under international law as its primary purpose is not to poison, it is poison enough as a heavy metal that there is a movement to illegalize them. A strict reading of the 2nd amendment would only cover military arms due to the militia clause though Congress is free to legalize other arms.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 13 2020, @06:39PM
Does depleted uranium pose a radiation hazard? [europa.eu]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday January 13 2020, @03:06AM (16 children)
We don't ever need to fear DU, plutonium, whatever. If responsibly worked with and stored, it would never be a real problem. Unlike a superbug, or Ice9, these materials on their own are fairly harmless when handled correctly. Chemicals need to be respected, not feared.
What we fear is us. Technology is neutral, and knowledge is not to be feared. Man is to be feared, and the more knowledge he possesses, the more he needs to be feared.
Only crazier thing is, that it is apparently a matter of scale. At the micro scale most people don't need to be feared, at least with intentions.At the macro scale, humanity is psychotic virus unable to establish harmony with itself or the environment.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 13 2020, @03:36AM (5 children)
Spoken like a man who has never personally investigated the exciting world of fluorine peroxides.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @01:25PM (4 children)
If you respect fluorine peroxides enough, you know enough you that you shouldn't mess with it unless really needed and very carefully ... exactly like you should respect trinitroglycerine
knowledge = respect
knowledge + fear = even higher respect
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 13 2020, @09:12PM (3 children)
Nah, you shouldn't mess with them ever. They make TATP look cute and huggable and it desperately desires to spontaneously explode in quantities over a gram. Well, unless you're just completely fed up with whatever building you plan to fabricate them in and all of your nearby neighbors. I mean, consider dioxygen difluoride (a.k.a. FOOF). You start out by pumping a fluorine/oxygen mixture through a 700C heating element. And it doesn't get any less suicidal going forward.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @08:08AM (2 children)
Don't you tend to die fast with those if "stuff happens"? I'd rather risk dying in seconds than suffer for weeks or months: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-dangers-of-dimethylmercury-/3010064.article [chemistryworld.com]
Which would you prefer, a tiny drop of dimethylmercury on your hand or a tiny drop of FOOF on your hand?
I'd take the FOOF.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 15 2020, @12:43AM (1 child)
Fluorine is also poisonous in addition to being explosive, so six of one, half a dozen of the other.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15 2020, @11:11AM
Still not as scary. https://ehs.berkeley.edu/lessons-learned/lesson-learned-researcher-smells-toxic-fluorine-gas-when-changing-out-gas-cylinder [berkeley.edu]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @05:41AM (3 children)
How far you are willing to go down this track?
E.g. do you also call "wise" the religious fundamentalists and politicians who fear science because is backed by a massive amount (in absolute terms) of scientists?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pipedwho on Monday January 13 2020, @08:51AM (2 children)
'man' includes all the religious fundamentalists, scientists, mathematicians, politicians, etc.
Irrespective of who is responsible for creating the knowledge, it ends up 'possessed' not only by those that understand the details, but by those thirsting for power.
Herein lies the fear.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @09:01AM
If "those thirsting for power" do not motivate enough some "that understand the details" (which may include themselves - mwah-ha-ha), the former have little chance to do evil.
So, ultimately, boils down to "do you fear scientists and/or engineers"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 13 2020, @06:51PM
'Man' also includes Immerman, who claimed depleted uranium isn't even radioactive when it DEFINITELY is.
And, 'man' also includes all the people who modded that FALSE claim 'Informative.'
My fear is ignorance, in all it's forms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:49PM
I had to look that up, as I thought that Ice-9 was harmless.
Turns out, I was right, real ice-9 is harmless, didn't know about this fictional stuff. That would be a problem.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @04:24PM
>What we fear is us. Technology is neutral, and knowledge is not to be feared. Man is to be feared, and the more knowledge he possesses, the more he needs to be feared.
And with good reason, as a brief skim through history (or modern world affairs) will show.
I don't fear children or matches - but put a box of matches in a room full of children, and I'll get worried fast, and with good reason. Similarly I don't fear knowledge in isolation, but for our purposes all knowledge is knowledge in the hands of humans, and the combination is deserving of fear.
>Only crazier thing is, that it is apparently a matter of scale. e. At the micro scale most people don't need to be feared, at least with intentions...
Knowledge can throw that out the window though. Without knowledge, individuals only need to be feared individually. One man with a club can be dangerous, but the damage he can cause is limited enough that only those within arm's length need to be immediately concerned, and he'll have a hard time hurting a dozen others if they stand together. A man with a flask of poison is considerably more dangerous, as is a man with an automatic rifle. And a single man capable of launching a large scale nuclear strike can endanger all of human civilization on a whim, while a single man working in a bio-weapon facility can endanger the survival of the entire human species through nothing more than carelessness.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 13 2020, @06:45PM (2 children)
That's one hell of a big IF!
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday January 13 2020, @10:29PM (1 child)
You make my point all the more :)
What makes it a big IF again? Logistics? Lack of technology? Impossibility? Or just humanity?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 13 2020, @10:40PM
Republicans
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 14 2020, @08:27AM
This seems scary enough to me:
https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-dangers-of-dimethylmercury-/3010064.article [chemistryworld.com]
Not as scary as stuff like weaponized diseases (natural or "modified/custom made") but still scary.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Monday January 13 2020, @03:10AM (8 children)
"The fact that we can use depleted uranium to do this provides proof that we don't need to be afraid of it as it might actually be very useful for us."
I'll be the first to admit that most of the OMGWTNUKULARFRADIATIONZ!11!1!1!!!crowd are generally...insufficiently informed, but the fact that a substance is useful doesn't impact how dangerous it is or is not.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:34AM
Sure it is. That's why in the 1970s when the NIH did an in vitro screening of compounds to treat cancer it left out ascorbate on purpose. It was known to be so nontoxic that it would be stupid to even check they said. Turns out now it is the most selective killer of cancer cells ever seen.
https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108(17)30104-6 [cell.com]
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday January 13 2020, @03:43AM (4 children)
Aren't people afraid of most things that are very useful?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @05:43AM (3 children)
Ummm... really?
The way I know, only incels (and, maybe, some religious nuts) are afraid of sex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @01:29PM (2 children)
people fear fire... fire made us humans
people fear eletricity ... it allow us to reach much higher technologic level
middle age people fear "magic" ... it is now called knowledge
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Monday January 13 2020, @01:43PM (1 child)
I still fail to see what the fear of fire, electricity or knowledge have to do with the fear of sex ("sex" taken as one of the things that "are very useful").
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday January 13 2020, @03:54PM
People fear what they do not understand.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @12:29PM (1 child)
Seems so are you. You certainly don't want to have large concentrations of U-238 around willy-nilly. It's not a substance that is benign.
Complacency and ignorance are a dangerous combination. And that swings both ways - with the "OMGWTNUKULARFRADIATIONZ!11!1!1!!!crowd" as well as the other side of this name-calling charade.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday January 14 2020, @02:01AM
RIF
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday January 13 2020, @03:40AM (16 children)
Nuclear waste has almost nothing to do with depleted uranium. https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html [whatisnuclear.com]
Nuclear waste is highly radioactive spent reactor fuel.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:45AM (15 children)
If it is highly radioactive that means it is still fuel. There is just cheaper fuel around to use... for now. But I guarantee you there are groups getting paid to accumulate this nuclear "waste" and lobbying for laws to prevent new mining of uranium/plutonium/etc.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday January 13 2020, @08:55AM (11 children)
Wrong. It is nuclear fuel if you can cause a chain reaction. If it is merely radioactive, no matter how highly, then it is not usable as nuclear fuel.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @09:51AM (4 children)
If it heats something up it can be used as fuel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @01:31PM (3 children)
True, but it doesn't head high enough ... to produce electricity you need a big temperature delta, if it is too small, it will not be useful... specially if you then have to take care of the radioactive problem
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @03:44PM (2 children)
Not at all radiothermal batteries are a wonderful source of long-term power from non-fissile radioactive material. What they're not is a *large* source of such power. There is a trade-off to be made between longevity and power output (more radioactive material produces more power for a shorter time), but anything that produced power on the scale of a power plant would likely be to large, costly, dangerous, and short-lived to be even worth considering. Work great for remote lighthouses, space probes, etc. though.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 13 2020, @09:11PM (1 child)
My understanding is that nuclear waste also has a tendency to be chemically very active.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 14 2020, @02:16AM
Probably so - a whole bunch of newly created atoms sitting around in a completely (chemically) unnatural deposit? That's probably about as chemically volatile a state as those atoms will ever be in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @12:15PM (3 children)
Then why are we putting all this non-fuel to be a fuel in nuclear reactors?? Hmm???
Little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It allows you to get in trouble but you don't know enough to get yourself out of that trouble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @01:49PM (2 children)
i agree.
nuclear waste is man made thru fission or irradiation, for example neutron bombardment.
call "depleted" uranium a form of nuclear waste is wrong in the sense that it waters down the seriousness of nuclear waste.
so called "depleted uranium" is just regular uranium from the mine that has been subjected to a seperation process to remove the more radioactif isotope of uranium which is then use in a regular non heavy water reactor to make lots of radiation, some steam and "once thru" electricity.
obviously it is furthermore a mistake to call "depleted" uranium radioactif waste because it is acctually less radioactif then the original mined ore. this just servers to muddle the water.
and ofc there are rather huge amounts of uranium from the seperation process (on top of regular tailings from mining works) and there are some fears, maybe, that some genius and evil hacker finds a design and assembly that turns golf clubs into a city leveling shovel...?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:31PM (1 child)
Uranium ore is depleted of U-235 isotopes. Then we have a game of telephone with sales guys or a few generals and you end up with "this is depleted uranium".... akin of some people calling "high blood pressure" just "high blood", which is a ridicules shortening of the correct expression.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday January 13 2020, @04:13PM
And spent fuel rods have more U-235 than depleted uranium. Our current PWR reactor designs don't burn the fuel terribly efficiently.
The problem is the spent rods also have a lot of other isotopes in them which make them a pain to deal with, so they end up sitting in pools near reactors.
If we made use of breeder reactors, we could make use of these spent fuel rods and put them to work. Currently it is cheaper and more politically acceptable to just let them sit.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Informative) by Muad'Dave on Monday January 13 2020, @01:41PM (1 child)
You do not need a chain reaction [wikipedia.org] to make use of nuclear fuel. [csmonitor.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:52PM
Right, only with specific designs.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @04:08PM (2 children)
>If it is highly radioactive that means it is still fuel.
Actually, no. Most nuclear fuel is not appreciably radioactive, it's the fission products created by the reaction (the waste) that are radioactive, and they're pretty reliably not fissile, so can't be used as nuclear fuel. They can be used in far lower power radiothermal batteries and the like, .
There is a related issue though that you might be thinking of: most nuclear "waste" is in fact still perfectly good fuel - most modern reactors only use about 5-10% of the fuel before the waste products poison the reaction so badly that the fuel can no longer sustain a chain reaction and needs to be replaced. In a sane world that fuel would be reprocessed, extracting the 5-10% of short-lived highly radioactive waste for disposal, and sending the rest back to be re-used in the reactor as perfectly good fuel. It's a dangerous and expensive process, but was actually standard in the early days of nuclear power, before advances in uranium mining and refining technologies made producing fresh fuel substantially cheaper than reprocessing. *
Which gets us to the current situation - rather than just sequestering short-lived, highly radioactive waste that would be safe to handle within a few centuries, we're storing it thoroughly mixed with 10x as much fission fuel, which fissions in response to some of the radiation, producing fresh waste products in a process that will ensure it remains dangerously radioactive for millions of years. But we do intentionally store the "waste" in ways that will make it relatively easy for our descendants to extract and reprocess it somewhere down the line...aside from the ridiculous radiation levels at least.
* Alternatively it's possible to build reactors that "burn" (almost) all the fuel in a single pass, drastically reducing the amount of reprocessing needed to only dispose of actual waste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @04:39PM (1 child)
Actually, yes. If it is meaningfully radioactive (enough to be dangerous) then it is a possible source of energy, ie fuel.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 13 2020, @04:58PM
Not nuclear (fission or fusion) fuel though. And the energy that can be extracted from it is almost nonexistent compared to what was available in the original fuel. Nobody is going to be shutting down uranium mining in favor of converting radiation from waste into energy - all the waste produced by the entire world to date probably doesn't produce as much power as a single decent-sized fission reactor. Not to mention most of the radioactivity disappears quickly - within a few decades you'd only be getting a fraction of the power it's releasing today.