wall@wrl.dec.com (David Wall) (11/08/90)
JoSH:
Can you elaborate on why you think nanotechnology could help
us achieve clean fission? I haven't noticed anything about that
anywhere else. On the face of it, I can't see why it would help:
fission is dirty because of particles and events that occur on
smaller than nanotech scales. Or am I missing something?
David Wall
wall@decwrl.dec.com
[Direct neutron irradiation is fairly easy to contain with a
few meters of water (or boron or what have you). The dirtiness of
fission lies mainly in the fact that irradiated material is now a
low-level emitter due to transmutation. Nanotech would make possible
(a) self-contained fission generating units with internal self-
repair, cutting down drastically on the flow of irradiated material,
and (b) much cheaper isotopic separation, making it possible to
clean up low-level wastes simply by removing the radioactive
atoms from them.
--JoSH]