• Question: Can depleted uranium from nuclear waste be melted down and form an Alloy to balance the uranium making less radioactive?

    Asked by Ayush123 to Tora, Clare on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Tora Smulders-Srinivasan

      Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      I don’t know! I think nuclear waste is too radioactive to be melted down, but it’s not my area of knowledge…

      Are you interested in nuclear energy? My father is an engineer & he works on the cooling systems needed in nuclear energy plants…

    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      So the waste from a nuclear reactor is a mix of different elements and isotopes. It could be melted relatively easily (the melting point of uranium is over 1000 oC) but I dont know how much this would help. Some the radiative isotopes will decay very quickly (like thorium-234) within a few weeks but the other waste products like thorium-230 which takes 77,000 years to decay by half!

      The problem is that mixing a radioactive element with a non-radioactive element wont help to remove the radioactivity, it will still give off radiation. Just now, the only thing we can do is put the waste in very very thick concrete and bury it very deep in the earth which isn’t a great long term solution.

Comments

  • Photo: Ayush123

    Ayush123 commented on :

    Thank you for the reply.

  • Photo: Daniel

    Daniel commented on :

    Hi there Ayush,
    Yes, it can. It is used on amour piercing munitions because it is so dense. Depleted Uranium is more than one and a half times as dense as lead. Its use is controversial because it is also a bit radioactive and thus poisonous. As such it is on the list of weapons that the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities would like to ban.