TRANSMUTATION, in which lasers might cut the half-life of radioactive waste from millions of years to mere minutes, and other futuristic remediation technologies, have believers.
From now on, any underground nuclear waste dumps built in the UK will be designed to allow for the possibility of such technologies.
So said the UK鈥檚 Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in new technical and safety rules published this week. Any new sites must allow waste to be retrievable for 100 years.
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Although there is currently no way to reduce the half-life of high volumes of radioactive waste, huge lasers have reduced the half-lives of specks of such material. 鈥淚f something like that were to become successful, the facility must not preclude the option of retrievability,鈥� says Bruce McKirdy of the NDA.
