Cover image Nobita and The Fury Road by Bung Carol
One of many prominent complaints from anti-nuclear activists, from down the street to the floors of academia, is addressed towards nuclear waste. Normative slogans such as intergenerational justice are among the most frequently used. Technological solution through a process called nuclear transmutation by Transmutex, a Swiss-based nuclear power plant, is about to silence them with a valuable, real-world solution.
Nuclear waste: a real-world potential problem whined by anti-nuclear moralists
Nuclear waste is one of the most important issues targeted by anti-nuclear activists from down the street up to academia floors to steer public opinion against nuclear energy. Critics against nuclear waste generally have a normative tone with good-bad dichotomy and employ one of the most, if not the most echoed values among activists: justice.
The type of justice addressed by the anti-nuclear activists in the case of nuclear waste here is intergenerational justice. Nuclear waste, particularly the highly radioactive one, may not pose a problem for the current generation. The geological deposit may be the best site to store the highly radioactive waste for the next several hundred years. However, some highly radioactive waste takes around ten thousand years for the highly radioactive waste to pass its half-life. This is the time needed by particles to decay, and thus lose its radioactivity. The World Nuclear Association notes that the lifetime of radiotoxic materials vary between 1000 to 10,000 years before the radioactivity decays to the originally mined ore. The Nuclear Energy Agency also comes up with the same 10,000 years estimates for these high-level waste. Another account from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates a higher estimates of 24,000 years for Plutonium-239 (Pu) to reach its half-life.
The long half-life period of high level nuclear waste which can reach tens of thousands of years into the future becomes one of the main critical targets by anti-nuclear activists towards the nuclear industry. After all, the best storage technique known at the moment, namely, the geological disposal, is only predicted to remain unchanged for one hundred to two hundred years. It is, however, worth noting that the hundreds-years projection for a stable geological disposal site indicates nothing of its viability beyond the projected time. The problem is that these anti-nuclear activists treat this uncertain stability of a geological site past their projected time as a certain instability. They rely on a moral jargon, namely, intergenerational justice, to poke holes into this uncertain time period.
Nuclear transmutation: a real-world solution by nuclear engineers
Fortunately, there is a reason to be optimistic about our technological progress in nuclear waste management. Transmutex, a Swiss-based company, is designing a new reactor technology fueled by nuclear waste. While the current commercial reactors to-date are based on fission, Transmutex’ reactor is based on nuclear transmutation.
As the name suggests, nuclear transmutation is different from nuclear fission. In the nuclear fission, the Uranium-235 is splitted in order to release a large amount of energy which is then used to rotate the turbine by different techniques of different reactor types. There are already four generations of reactors, each generation consists of different reactor techniques and technology. Meanwhile, with transmutation, the fuel used is thorium which is beamed by a particle accelerator so that it transmutes into Uranium-233. This U-233 produces energy as it breaks up and this released energy is used to move the electricity turbine.
The ability to use thorium is important here because other than attainable in nature, thorium is also a byproduct of nuclear fission alongside plutonium (Pu). By applying particle accelerator technology into the reactor, Transmutex claims to be able to reduce the half-life of some high-level radioactive waste (HLW) by a thousandth. Even an exaggerated 300,000 years half-life period of Pu can be reduced to a mere 300 years which is far more manageable to us and more in line with the guaranteed stability of the current geological disposal sites.
Transmutex started their project in 2019 as a joint startup between Federico Carminati, a Swiss nuclear scientist and Franklin Servan Schreiber, a French entrepreneur. Their objective is to have this new type of technique and reactor commercial by 2030. The idea of using thorium instead of uranium would solve the problem of existing nuclear waste echoed by anti-nuclear activists.
Is Transmutex’ engineering solution more ethical than the anti-nuclear “moral” solution by anti-nuclear activists?
What Transmutex is developing in particular and what nuclear transmutation is doing towards thorium (Th) in general is a concrete example of real engineering solution to real-world problems without taking the ideologised, easy-way-out anti-nuclear position. This engineering solution through the use of thorium is morally better in at least three ways: solving transgenerational radioactive waste problem, democratisation of primary energy, and ensuring energy abundance for present and future generations.
First, solving the radioactive waste problem. As explained above, primarily using thorium alongside plutonium to convert them into a fissile U-233 is a real-world solution to the radioactive waste problem since these are the high-level radioactive wastes from our current reactors. It surely contributes to the viability of deep-underground storage whose stability is only foreseeable in the scale of hundreds of years. Moreover, this process produces a significantly lower amount of HLW compared to nuclear fissile. Transmutation greatly reduces the risk posed by HLW and is therefore morally significant.
Second, the democratisation of primary energy. Since thorium is more abundant than uranium, chances of monopoly of raw material are also less than uranium-based reactors. The World Nuclear Association notes that Thorium is three times more abundant than uranium, mostly found on soils and rocks, but not in seawater, a contrast from uranium. A more democratic primary energy here means a more spreaded and commonly found fuel such that the risk of supply monopoly is reduced.
Third, ensuring energy abundance for present and future generations. It is not a secret that nuclear energy is the most energy dense among other primary energies. Even with our current reactor technologies, when we compare the amount of electricity produced by nuclear energy to other sources, one uranium pellet is equal to 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 120 gallons of oil, and one ton of coal. It means that nuclear power is the best solution to solve the problem of energy poverty for some communities in developed nations, but more importantly, it provides abundant energy to developing nations to catch up through abundant electricity. Adding that to the fact that thorium in particular is three times more abundant than uranium in nature, not only present generations across the world can benefit from the nuclear power, but also the future generations are significantly better off with it.
All in all, nuclear transmutation via particle accelerator is yet another reason to be optimistic about technological development in the energy sector. A safer operation and waste management, higher availability of natural resources, all while being able to ensure abundant electricity to present and future generations, are among the reasons nuclear energy in general, or transmutation in particular, deserve public support. This technological solution – and potentially more solutions to come – is also a reason for which anti-nuclear activists do not have a moral stance to attack nuclear energy, even on the basis of cross generation nuclear waste.
Our reactor technologies are clearly getting better in both engineering and moral ground, and they deserve all possible public and governmental support.
