Strontium 90 is a common radioactive by-product of fission in nuclear power plants. When extracted from the reactor along with other isotopes, a mixture is created made up of the radioactive material and inert ions like sodium and calcium.
Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University have developed a compound that captures the radioactive ions so they can be siphoned off and separated from inert material.
“The layered sulfides used work quite well,’ scientist Mercouri Kanatzidis said. “We even surprised ourselves.”
This mixture is often incredibly acidic or alkaline, making it difficult to find a compound that can survive long enough to extract the strontium and be able to not react with the sodium, which is harmless.
Kanatzidis and colleague Manolis Manos created a synthetic compound made up of sulfides that can survive in the harsh acidic or alkaline climate of the mixture and strips away 99 percent of the strontium 90.
“The material is remarkably simple and can be created in large quantities at a relatively low cost,” Kanatzidis said.
The synthetic compound trades its own potassium ions for strontium and can almost completely replace the radioactive element within a few hours.
The next step is to experiment with the compound’s ability to siphon away other common radioactive elements like cesium and uranium.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
Related stories:
New Material Can Find a Needle in a Nuclear Waste Haystack
Nuclear power has advantages, but, if this method of making power is to be viable long term, discovering new solutions to radioactive waste disposal and other problems are critical. Otherwise nuclear power is unlikely to become mainstream.
ORNL nanoscience center 'Jump Starts' medical compound device
A device that could create custom-tailored medical compounds faster than ever before is one of the first projects launched under the new Center for Nanophase Materials Science at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Are anxiety disorders all in the mind?
Using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), researchers in The Netherlands were able to detect biochemical differences in the brains of individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia), providing evidence of a long-suspected biological cause for the dysfunction.
New Method Offers Insight into Radiation Damage to DNA
A new technique for assessing the damage radiation causes to DNA indicates that the spatial arrangement of damaged sites, or lesions, is more important than the number of lesions in determining the severity of the damage. The technique, developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Brookhaven National Laboratory, helps reveal why high-energy charged particles such as the heavy ions in outer space are more potentially harmful than lower-energy forms of radiation such as x-rays and gamma rays.
Europe to build state of the art laboratory
One of the great ongoing challenges of astrophysics, to find out how stars evolve and die, is to be tackled in an ambitious European research programme. This will involve studying in the laboratory over 25 critical nuclear reactions using low-energy stable beams of ions, in order to understand stellar evolution.
Scientists search for brain center responsible for tinnitus
For the more than 50 million Americans who experience the phantom sounds of tinnitus -- ringing in the ears that can range from annoying to debilitating -- certain well-trained rats may be their best hope for finding relief.
Nanotubes Enable New Approach to Cancer Radiotherapy
Radioactive elements, or radionuclides, are well-established anticancer agents whose main limitation is that they kill healthy cells almost as easily as they do tumors. But because nanoparticles can be targeted to tumors, researchers have seized on the idea of using nanoparticles to deliver radionuclides to tumors, thus sparing healthy tissues from radiation-induced damage.
Coil design confines plasma in stellarator fusion reactor
Researchers from New York University have designed a configuration of coils for a stellarator, a type of device that controls fusion reactions. The shape, number and position of the coils are optimized to generate an external magnetic field for the stellarator that will prevent the hot plasma from deteriorating.