Self-Healing Ceramics for Nuclear Safety 45
Roland Piquepaille writes "Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers have used supercomputers to simulate how common ceramics could repair themselves after radiation-induced damages. This is an important discovery because 'materials that can resist radiation damage are needed to expand the use of nuclear energy.' These ceramics, which are able to handle high radiation doses, could improve the durability of nuclear power plants. They also might help to solve the problem of nuclear waste storage. But read more for additional references about how this research could improve nuclear safety."
Waste storage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Waste storage? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get your fuel recycling going properly, then the cycle-end waste gets back to ore-level radioactivity in a couple hundred years. We have building technology that can reliably be trusted to store stuff for a couple hundred years - poured cement anywhere that isn't in a flood zone or on a tectonic fault line.
It's only with this damn fool "recycling nuclear fuel gives the terrorists nuclear bombs" nonsense that we're stuck with dangerously radioactive material 1500 years from now.