Reply To: Proliferation?

[Brian H]

Transmute wrote: I think I may have stated this in another thread: the neutron flux could be used to destroy nuclear waste (as opposed to shoving it in a mountain and hoping it stays there for a million years) so a DPF reactor fusing D+D or D+T could be used to clean up the waste of the nuclear age while producing energy (the induced fission of the waste acts as an energy multiplier) as well as the waste/fuel could be reprocessed to extract plutonium, although the plutonium produced from this process would consist of unwanted isotopes that would make it less then ideal for making bombs it could go backing into fueling existing nuclear reactors (less need for new power plants, reactor powered on what was waste and with their waste recycled don’t make new waste (say that ten times fast))

I don’t think you can use the alpha beam twice. Either you strip out its energy with the solenoids to make electricity, or you let it barrel on thru to irradiate your waste. Pick one.

Perhaps you could extract heat from the fuel conversion process, but then you have to paste on that whole steam-turbine-generation plant deal to do anything with it.

But as a dedicated waste disposal project it probably has legs, just not as a side-benefit of electrical power generation.