Radioactive Wastes

“Ultimate Pollution” (Science/Medicine, Dec. 2) by Daniel Gibson regarding transmutation of high-level nuclear waste failed to mention two very important aspects. The first is that transmutation was among the first techniques attempted by Westinghouse over 30 years ago to handle the long-term nuclear waste from its nuclear power plants. It failed then because as much or more new high-level waste was created in the process as original high-level waste “reduced” to shorter lifetime isotopes.

The second aspect is that high-level waste is created by transmutation in the first place. For example, uranium in a nuclear reactor is bombarded by neutrons which transmutes a small percentage of it into plutonium and other transuranics, i.e. radioactive isotopes beyond uranium on the Periodic Chemical Table.

Los Alamos scientists obviously need something to do, and transmutation is as good a project as any to be working on. However, to those who think this will be the “golden development” that will revive the manufacturing of nuclear power plants here in the United States, they had better think again. It can be argued quite effectively that permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste not only has no solution in the foreseeable future but also is fundamentally an insoluble engineering problem.

SHELDON C. PLOTKIN, Los Angeles