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Unused Stockpiles of Nuclear Waste Could be More Useful Than We Might Think

posted by janrinok on Monday January 13 2020, @02:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the green-or-not-green dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Unused stockpiles of nuclear waste could be more useful than we might think: Chemists have found a new use for the waste product of nuclear power:

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

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @11:28AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @11:28AM (#942694)
    It's not even measured in ice ages. The half-life of U-238 is just a bit shorter than the age of the entire Solar System, meaning we still have just slightly less than half of all the U-238 that was present when the earth came together and the sun started shining. You'd have to wait about 4.4 billion years on average for a uranium atom to have an even chance of emitting a 4.2 MeV alpha particle and turn into thorium-234. The specific activity of U-238 is 12,400 becquerels per gram. That means only 12,400 alpha decays per second per gram of uranium. At 4.2 MeV per alpha particle emitted, that translates to 8.34 nanowatts of radioactive power per gram of uranium. That's a ridiculously small amount of energy being released by radioactive decay. It's not a lot more than the radioactive potassium-40 that is about 0.012% of all natural potassium, which has a specific activity of 264,000 becquerels per gram. K-40 decays to calcium-40 by emitting 1.31 MeV beta particles, so it's something like 55.4 nW per gram. A typical banana has something like 350 mg of potassium, of which 0.042 g is K-40. So we see something like 2.3 nW of radioactive power from a single banana. A bunch of four bananas thus emits more energy from radiation than a gram of depleted uranium.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @11:34AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @11:34AM (#942695)
    Whoops, slight miscalculation there. There's only 0.000042 g of K-40 in a typical banana, so that's 0.0023 nW per banana. A bushel of bananas would have about as much radiation power maybe.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @02:55PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @02:55PM (#942736)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @03:34PM (#942754)

        Yet you can hold a survey meter over a banana or purified potassium and hear it click away.

        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.