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       I have often blogged about the problem of nuclear waste disposal. In the U.S. alone there are over a hundred million pounds of spent nuclear fuel accumulating at nuclear power plants, but we have no permanent underground repository for spent nuclear fuel. The soonest we will have such a repository is 2050. The best that we can do is move the spent nuclear fuel rods from the cooling pools at nuclear plants to temporary storage in dry casks either at the site or a temporary storage facility. Any scientific discoveries that could help with this problem are welcome.
      The co-winner of the 2018 Nobel Physics prize is Professor Gérard Mourou. The Nobel prize was awarded to Mourou and Donna Strickland for their work on a technique called Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA). The work was carried out at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester in the USA.
      In the CPA technique, high-intensity, ultra-short pulses are light are generated by a laser. These short powerful blasts of laser light can make extremely accurate cuts in many different materials. In addition to being useful for laser cutting, this technique can also be used to study natural phenomena.
       The pulses of light created by CPA last for one attosecond. This is one billionth of a billionth of a second. With these extremely rapid pulses it is possible to study molecules and atoms. Not only is it possible to study atoms but it may be possible to influence the nucleus of an atom. Apparently, it will be possible to change the number of neutrons in the nucleus. This could result in altering the isotopic composition of radioactive materials and reducing the half-life of their radioactivity.
        Mourou said this in the French language journal, The Conversation, “Take the nucleus of an atom. It is made up of protons and neutrons. If we add or take away a neutron, it changes absolutely everything. It is no longer the same atom, and its properties will completely change. The lifespan of nuclear waste is fundamentally changed, and we could cut this from a million years to 30 minutes!
We are already able to irradiate large quantities of material in one go with a high-power laser, so the technique is perfectly applicable and, in theory, nothing prevents us from scaling it up to an industrial level. This is the project that I am launching in partnership with the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, or CEA, in France. We think that in 10 or 15 years' time we will have something we can demonstrate. This is what really allows me to dream, thinking of all the future applications of our invention."
       If Mourou can actually transmute nuclear waste and substantially reduce the period during which it is dangerously radioactive, it will have a tremendous impact on the global nuclear industry. Such a solution to the nuclear waste problem could make nuclear power competitive with other sources of energy. Unfortunately, if it takes ten or fifteen years to create a prototype, then it will come too late to be of much help in mitigating climate change.