Can you imagine obtain products of medical interest from the long-term nuclear waste generated by the current nuclear reactors? Can you imagine that while this process occurs clean energy is generated? Well, all this would be possible if the dream of power amplifier Carlo Rubbia could be carried out.
Are useful particle accelerators?
What may lie ahead
Particle accelerators are indispensable tools in the industry, medicine and research. In the future, they could be even more important as technological advances could open a whole new range of possibilities.
In medicine, the use of particle beams is constantly growing, both in cancer therapies and in the manufacture of radio-pharmaceuticals. Moreover, accelerators could provide us scalpels laser beam for precision surgery. The laser is already used in surgery for removal operations damaged tissues that require high precision. Achieving accelerators that use free-electron laser (FELs), capable of reaching ac-curacies of a fraction of a millimeter, can provide solutions that virtually no damage nearby tissues.
In environmental protection, accelerators will also play an important role. Thanks to them we can divide the long-term nuclear waste and transform them into harmless material. The technique, developed in the American laboratory at Los Alamos, was christened Accelerator Transmutation of Waste (ATW English). When high intensity beams bombard a target, producing neutrons, which are then combined with radioactive waste, causing them to divide into stable elements.
Accelerators for nuclear waste treatment facilities require large, but smaller accelerators can also help in environmental control. Mixing gaseous toxic waste generated by factories and generating power stations with ammonium, and irradiating the mixture with electron beams, poisonous gases (such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide) can be converted into useful products, for example fertilizers. Similar techniques can be used to sterilize sewage, so that we can also use them as fertilizer.
Perhaps the most significant recent development in terms of applications of accelerators is the generation of energy, which currently is actively pursuing this purpose from three different approaches.
One uses particle beams to compress atomic nuclei so tightly that reach merge while emitting energy. Another method employs an accelerator for producing muons, which are injected into a tank containing the fuel to be fused. Some of these muons take the place of electrons in the atomic orbitals, and as 200 times heavier than these, force nuclei to fuse. So far, both techniques use more energy than they produce, but increasingly is closer to reach equilibrium.
The latest idea, called Amp Energy, was invented by the Nobel Prize Carlo Rubbia, who works at CERN. Power Amplifier bombard your target (consisting of nuclear fuel) with a proton beam high intensity, causing nuclear fission and energy release.
This method offers two major advantages. First, unlike conventional nuclear power plants, it is impossible that a chain reaction as the reaction accelerator without stops. Second, since the technique is similar to ATW, the waste generated by nuclear power plants today, could be mixed with nuclear fuel, to go dividing them into harmless substances.
Energy Amplifier
One of the most promising employment of particle accelerators potential profits is to produce clean, safe and practically inexhaustible energy. The plan is to combine a particle accelerator with a nuclear reactor, and was devised by Carlo Rubbia, former director general of CERN.
The basic idea is simple, and differs from the standard nuclear power plants at two points.
The first reactor fuel would instead thorium uranium. Thorium is easy to extract and is three times more abundant than uranium (almost half of abundant than lead). Second, a particle accelerator would be used to produce neutrons who provoked nuclear fission. This has many advantages. The main thing is that the reaction is not self-sustaining, so that it is impossible to a loss of control, as happened in Chernobyl. Unlike conventional fission reactors, Rubbia machine needs energy to keep working. But the amount of energy produced would be more than the one supplied (hence the name "Energy Amplifier") orders.
The crucial difference between power amplifier and a nuclear reactor lies in the middle of electrons produced after the rupture of a nucleus. Conventional nuclear reactors use a rare isotope, uranium-235, mixed with a more common isotope, uranium-238. The first occurs in nature in a percentage of 1% of the total uranium found, and it is expensive to extract. When an atom of uranium-235 absorbs a neutron, fission's into lighter elements, releasing energy and two or three neutrons. Uranium-238 is likewise transformed into plutonium, which causes a serious security problem since this element is a hazardous waste. Neutrons released continue to cause more fission's, releasing more energy and more electrons; a chain reaction. Because the total number of neutrons grows with each fission necessary "scrub" the reactor control rods using a graphite to slow or stop the reaction.
In the Energy Amplifier, Thorium atoms absorb neutrons and divide releasing energy. Neutrons are also produced, but not enough to keep active the reaction. If the external supply of neutrons is depleted, the reaction simply stops.
In 1993, Rubbia started working on a project to develop their ideas and check their viability. The following year, financed with funds from the European Union, the investigation showed that one of its fundamental calculations were correct: the energy produced by fission is approximately 30 times higher than that supplied by the accelerator.
In 1995, research on Energy Booster spread the concept of nuclear waste incineration long lasting. The idea is to mix plutonium waste with thorium fuel serving, so that fission is performed while the residue is divided into harmless elements. The foundations of this work, originally designed in the American laboratory at Los Alamo's, were tested in 1996 at CERN, again with financial support from the European Union. The results were very encouraging and showed that not only could fission waste, but also several of the products originating in the process were isotopes have applications in medicine.
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