This is the statement from Gérard Mourou, who won the Nobel Prize for his research on ultrafast laser pulses.
No matter how powerful nuclear energy may seem, it is undeniable that generating nuclear energy results in tons of radioactive waste, which is extremely toxic and still poses a challenge in terms of complete disposal. Therefore, it is often buried as safely as possible in underground storage facilities. The worst waste, uranium-235 and plutonium-239, has a half-life of 24,000 years. This is also a significant headache for authorities in Europe, where many countries rely more on nuclear energy than anywhere else.
Thus, when physicist Gérard Mourou mentioned in his Nobel acceptance speech that lasers could reduce the lifespan of nuclear waste from “one million years to just 30 minutes,” those interested in the field of nuclear waste were thrilled.
Gérard Mourou, along with Donna Strickland, jointly received the Nobel Prize for their work on Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) at the University of Rochester. In his speech, he referenced “a passion for extremely powerful light.” CPA generates ultrashort optical pulses with extremely high intensity, containing an enormous amount of power. Mourou and Strickland’s goal is to develop a means to create highly precise cuts, useful in medical and industrial facilities.
Moreover, CPA has another equally important benefit. Its attosecond pulses are so fast that they illuminate surfaces, triggering reactions that are otherwise unobservable, such as processes occurring within individual atoms and in chemical reactions. This capability is what Mourou hopes will provide CPA the opportunity to neutralize nuclear waste.
Mourou explains: “Take the nucleus of an atom. It consists of protons and neutrons. If we add or subtract a neutron, it completely changes everything. It is no longer the same atom, and its properties will change entirely. The lifespan of nuclear waste has fundamentally changed, and we can reduce this time from a million years to just 30 minutes. We have been able to irradiate a large amount of material at once with a high-powered laser, so this technique is entirely feasible and theoretically, there’s nothing stopping us from scaling it up to an industrial level. This is a project I am developing in collaboration with the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, or CEA. We believe that in 10 to 15 years, we will have something that we can prove. This is what truly allows me to dream, to think about all the future applications of our invention.”
While 15 years may seem like a long wait, in comparison to dealing with the half-life of nuclear waste, this time is just a blink of an eye.
Greenpeace estimates there are approximately 250,000 tons of nuclear waste in 14 countries around the world.
Although nuclear energy is struggling to gain acceptance as a power source in the United States following a series of concerning incidents, along with the emergence of alternative sources such as solar and wind energy, many European countries have embraced it.
France relies on nuclear energy for 71% of its energy needs. Ukraine is the most dependent country at 56%, followed by Slovakia, Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. None of these countries have a solid plan for nuclear waste, other than storing it somewhere and hoping for a final solution. Or waiting thousands of years and hoping it stays put, without leaking into water supplies or the air.
Greenpeace estimates there are around 250,000 tons of nuclear waste in 14 countries worldwide. Of this, about 22,000 cubic meters are hazardous. According to GE-Hitachi, the cost of storing all of it exceeds $100 billion (excluding China, Russia, and India).
Nuclear energy could be the most promising candidate for the future.
The process Mourou is investigating is called “transmutation.” Nuclear energy may be the most promising candidate for the future, but there are still many other dangerous issues lurking. The idea here is to transform this nuclear waste into new atomic forms that pose no radiation problems; all that needs to be done is to change the composition of the nucleus. Mourou speaks about his plans for lasers and waste more clearly: “It’s like karate – you create a very strong force in a very, very short moment.”
This idea of transmutation is not new; it has been researched over the past 30 years in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Japan, and the US. Some efforts continue, while others have been abandoned. Rodney C. Ewing from Stanford states that while the physics could work, the transformation of high-level nuclear waste poses several challenges, such as separating individual radioactive nuclei, fabricating targets on a large mass scale, and ultimately irradiating and processing them.
Mourou and Tajima hope to shrink the distance a light beam must travel to transmute an atom by another 10,000 times. They are always thinking about that and do not underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead.
