Gavin Scott | Roman Reactors
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13 Apr Roman Reactors

Boris Johnson is planning to “solve” the climate crisis by filling the UK with new nuclear power stations. But if the Romans had built reactors in Britain 2,000 years ago we would still be trying to figure out how to deal with the radioactive waste, because it lasts, effectively, forever.

And if the Russians ever attacked British reactors as they did in those in the Ukraine, this small island would be facing an irreversible national disaster.

Without the technology to safeguard nuclear waste and protect reactors from attack, building new atomic power stations to deal with climate change is nuts.

 

1Comment
  • Thomas Smith
    Posted at 00:34h, 14 May Reply

    There is technology to sequester nuclear waste safely, but not to neutralize it. The process is called Synroc, and was developed by Prof. Ted Ringwood at ANU in Australia in 1978, with the help of scientists from ANSTO and other institutions. As the name suggests, it is a synthetic rock, and locks the radioactive waste in an insoluble crystal matrix. Unlike other waste disposal technologies which rely on fusing them into a glass, the synthetic rock is not soluble in water over a geological time span. More detail is given in a Wikipedia page dedicated to this technology.

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