A Possible Solution to the Nuclear Waste Problem By James Reed

     I love nuclear power, even the waste is exciting, at worst creating super-heroes, but it need not be like that. Now it looks like nuclear waste can be zapped by lasers, making it safe enough to kick around as one would a football:
  https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/nobel-prize-winner-suggests-blasting-nuclear-waste-lasers

“But now, for the first time, there may be a solution to the previously unsolvable nuclear waste issue.
Nobel laureate Gérard Mourou has proposed a novel solution that smacks of science fiction and revolves around blasting nuclear waste with lasers. Morou and his research partner Donna Strickland won their Nobel Prize in 2018 for their work with Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), a revolutionary invention that creates extremely rapid and ultra-powerful laser pulses with lots of different potential applications. “The original research focused on applications like laser machining and eye surgery,” reports ExtremeTech, “but scientists could also use it to observe atomic processes that happen at almost unfathomable speeds. If we could speed it up a bit more, Mourou says CPA could have a use in processing nuclear waste, too.” According to Mourou’s hypothesis, CPA could turn even the most nuclear waste we have sitting in secure storage facilities around the world, where it will otherwise remain radioactive for millions of years, into a substance so safe you could hold it in the palm of your hand. Of course, the CPA process will require a bit of tweaking to get to this point of capability. “Currently, CPA can produce laser pulses as brief as one attosecond — that’s a billionth of a billionth of a second. To transmute nuclear waste into something safe, Mourou says you’d need to increase the pulse rate by roughly 10,000 times,” says ExtremeTech.

“That might sound like a tall order, but CPA itself was an order of magnitude increase over previous lasers. Another innovation like CPA, and we could be in the ballpark.” The method would work by blasting nuclear waste with a laser pulse so strong and fast that it could knock protons out of the nuclei of dangerous substances like uranium 235 and plutonium 239, rendering them harmless. If this technology, which other experts agree makes sense in theory, could actually be invented and applied in the next couple of decades, it would be difficult to overstate the impact it would have on our energy sector and, indeed, the entire world. In order to avoid the fast-approaching tipping point for catastrophic climate change, we need to decarbonize fast and starting right now. Solving the problem of nuclear waste would make that a whole lot safer and more attainable. “

     Great stuff. Even though I believe that the current climate hysteria, is hysterical, and that carbon-based fuels are a gift from God, and should be burned until the cows come home, maybe coughing a little, but otherwise happy, nuclear is even better, with the amount of stuff that could fill your mouth powering entire cities, or some fantastic statistic like that. Solving the waste problem will give us plenty of power, enabling lights to eternally be left on, and material comfort to always embrace us, in this age of plenty.
Bring on the lasers!