Could we ever invent a machine to do this towards Nuclear Waste?

Question

Could we create a machine that separates the atoms of the Nuclear Waste therefore it is practically abolished, no longer existing?

Please give an honest answer but don't be sarcastic, I am only trying to think of ideas that may help us dispose of it as I believe burying it will end up building the stock to an extent that is just ridiculous?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Nuclear waste isn't bad because of it's atoms, the radiation from neutrons flying around in it is what is so bad.

Answer 2

I'd expect power usage to be pretty d**n high if you are trying to forcibly split fission products, probably creating more nuclear waste to power the process than it could get rid of if the nuclear waste really is waste (current nuclear waste has so much energy left that it really shouldn't be called waste).

If you've still got a lot of energy left in the nuclear waste then a particle accelerator might be able to fission the transuranics away into faster decaying fission products, but so could a reactor which we could actually get some electricity from.

Once you've used up all the energy in the Uranium (or Thorium) there's really not much else to do other than store what's left long enough for it to become harmless.

Answer 3

That's a great question. Gasoline was actually  a by product when cars ran on kerosene. So we create new technology all the time. Just because we bury it today, doesn't mean it will always be there, and there will be no use for it in the future.  

Answer 4

It would be nice, but we need to have scientific minds working on it.

Answer 5

not in the near future.

what you'd have to do is tear the atoms apart.

that takes a tremendous amount of energy.

in addition, there are different levels of radio active waste.

some are only slightly radio active.

so you'd be using  lot of energy to process a relatively small amount of radiation.

the truth is, burying the stuff in the middle of Nevada is the best answer we have right now.

i do understand that they don't like it.

however, that's far better than letting the stuff stay in storage all around the country.

my apologies to Nevada.  sorry.

Answer 6

Perhaps the best way to get rid of toxic amounts of nuclear waste is to use something from nature and not a machine.  I'm sure we could conjure  up a device or substance that would do the job; but, a far better and more cost effective method might be found in the natural world.  There is a strain of bacterium that is highly resistant to nuclear radiation, in fact they discovered it living in a can of irradiated meat.  Anyway the bug is called Deinococcus radiodurans.  They have been experimenting with changing some of the genes to make it consume toxic solutions found around waste sites.  Point is, why would we build a machine or chemical, when nature built a solution for us?  

Answer 7

I would believe so. There is an experimental garbage dump that uses huge amounts of energy to literally incinerate the molecular make up of trash it turns whatever goes in it into plasma... i honestly dont know much about it and info on this process seems limited, so thats on you to look up, but if we can do that to trash, why not nuclear waste? This process would even (theoretically) nullify radioactivity as well. hoped this helped.