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

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 #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @01:31PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 13 2020, @01:31PM (#942709)

    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)

    by Immerman (3985) on Monday January 13 2020, @03:44PM (#942759)

    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)

      by dry (223) on Monday January 13 2020, @09:11PM (#942861) Journal

      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

        by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday January 14 2020, @02:16AM (#942948)

        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.