Talk:Israeli company develops new radioactive waste conversion process

Is headline accurate?

The science of this is well beyond my level of knowledge, but from what I read in the sources this is what I think:

1. They use high heat to make the radio-active waste benign; this obviously requires a lot of energy.
2. A hot gas remains which can be used for generating electricity; but this is just recapturing some of the energy used in raising the temperatures.
3. I don't think there is a net gain in energy; but I could very well be wrong.
   

--SVTCobra 23:43, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Are they claiming they've discovered a chemical process that affects nuclear properties of a substance? (That's still not possible with today's technology, as far as I know.) Wouldn't the glass still be radioactive waste, just... glassy? More likely, the radiation is simply shielded by the glass (and various impurities), and is prevented from leeching out into the environment.

More suspect is the claim to produce net gain in usable energy. I found some possible answers in the abstract of this article on "Self sustaining vitrification for immobilisation of radioactive and toxic waste". Seems that by adding "powdered metal fuel", the mixture is self-burning -- so I suppose the turbines could generate some energy. We still need to know what the net waste products are of this procedure as well as how much electricity is consumed in creating and prepping the fuel. -- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 00:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've done a little research over at EER's PGM site, and edited the article to reflect the new information. See what you think. -- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 01:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent work. The article looks great, but my core question remains about the headline. Is it converting radioactive waste into clean energy? Or is it an energy efficient way of neutralizing radioactive waste? --SVTCobra 02:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, the headline is definitely suspect. They're not converting waste into energy, they're reducing waste to a less harmful state (and drastically smaller volume) in a way that produces some excess energy. I'm not up for wordsmithing right now; maybe you can create a better title? -- Phyzome is Tim McCormack 20:37, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I moved it to "Israeli company develops new radioactive waste conversion process".--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 23:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)