Israeli Discovery Converts Radioactive Waste into Safe Inert Vitrified "Rock" and Clean Energy

This post is adapted from an item in ISRAEL 21c that describes an Israeli discovery that converts dangerous radioactive waste into clean energy: 

The problem of radioactive waste is a global one, and getting increasingly worse. All countries in the industrialized world are waking up to the need for safer hazardous waste disposal methods.

An Israeli firm, Environmental Energy Resources (EER), has developed a reactor that converts radioactive, hazardous and municipal waste into inert byproducts; vitrified slag and clean energy.

Shown above, a chunk of black, lava-like rock that is the result of the PGM process invented by EER.

Using a system called plasma gasification melting technology (PGM) developed by scientists from Russia's Kurchatov Institute research center, the Radon Institute in Russia, and Israel's Technion Institute - EER combines high temperatures and low-radioactive energy to transform waste into vitrified slag and syngas which is used to make electricity.

"We go up to 7,000 degrees centigrade and end at 1,400 centigrade," says Moshe Stern, founder and president of the Ramat Gan-based company.

Shrem adds that EER's waste disposal reactor does not harm the environment and leaves no surface water, groundwater, or soil pollution in its wake. The EER reactor combines three processes into one solution: it takes plasma torches to break down the waste; carbon leftovers are gasified and inorganic components are converted to solid waste. The remaining vitrified material is inert and can be cast into molds to produce tiles, blocks or plates for the construction industry.

EER then purifies the gas and with it operates turbines to generate electricity. EER produces energy - 70% of which goes back to power the reactor with a 30% excess which can be sold.

"It [the vitrified slag] also makes a good recyclable material for building and paving roads," Shrem said. Earlier, he told ISRAEL21c that EER can take low-radioactive, medical and municipal solid waste and produce from it clean energy that "can be used for just about anything."

The cost for treating and burying low-radioactive nuclear waste currently stands at about $30,000 per ton. The EER process will cost $3,000 per ton and produce only a 1% per volume solid byproduct.

In 2004, the Ukrainian government put out a tender searching for a solution that would provide safer hazardous waste disposal methods. EER sent in their proposal, and their technology won the bid.

EER's Karmiel facility and its installation in the Ukraine have a capacity to convert 500 to 1,000 kilograms of waste per hour. Other industry solutions, the company claims, can only treat 50 kilograms per hour and are much more costly.

"We are not burning. This is the key word," Shrem said. "When you burn you produce dioxin. Instead, we vacuum out the oxygen to prevent combustion."

In the US, EER is working to treat low-radioactive liquid waste and recently contracted with Energy Solutions, the largest American company in the field with 75% of the US market.

The company brochure gives the following advantages for the process.

• Low capital investment. The efforts of an expert engineering team and more than a decade of operating experience result in optimal and significantly smaller plant design that translates to a reduction in capital investment and long-term operating costs.
• Enhanced environmental performance. Proven environmental benefits enable a smoother and easier permitting phase to manufacturers and operators.
• Elimination of landfill costs. There is no residual ash to dispose of. In addition, the completely molten, vitrified slag can replace quarried materials for the road construction and building industries.
• Lower operating and treatment costs. PGM’s operating and treatment costs are approximately 15% lower than conventional incinerators. Savings are substantially higher when the elimination of ash disposal costs is factored in — an estimated additional $35 million over the course of a 150,000 tpa typical facility’s lifespan.

Comments

[marcus]

Sounds like this could really transform the industry. Must be a catch somewhere...?

[GreyFlcn]

From the sound of it, it's low level medical and municipal solid waste.

Not nuclear waste.

[amazingdrx]

Plasma torches powered by wind electricity could gasify garbage, or tar sands, coal, and oil underground. A much better alternative than mining. The gas can then be condensed into liquid fuel.

It would be a very low GHG emitting method. The waste heat from condensation could be used to cogenerate electricity.

[GAB]

I guess the important question is what percentage of our nuclear waste is the low level variety that this system can clean up?

Has there been any more information on the experiments dealing with cryogenic treating of high level wastes?

I'd rather try any of these than bury in under Toronto like todays news story in the star proposes.

[Kit P.]

Wow, Israel discovers how to make glass. Most of the volume radioactive waste is low level, and most of that is medical. There is nothing dangerous about the radioactivity in low level waste. This is why it can be placed in a properly designed landfill.

The Waste Treatment Plant under construction at Hanford will turn the waste from making plutonium into glass logs. Since the fission products in high level waste will decay faster than they can leach out of the glass, it would also be safe to put the glass logs into a landfill at Hanford. However, it would be even safer (neglecting getting hit by a truck), to put the logs in Yucca Mountain, isolating it from groundwater for a hundred thousand years.

[Mike]

this doesnt sound any different than the Startech Plasma Converter closed-loop elemental recycling system.

http://www.startech.net

and

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/873aae7bf86c0110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

[Mouseplatterman]

Just because the technology basically exists elsewhere, doesn't work for high-level radioactive waste, and could be put in landfills doesn't mean its not worth doing. It generates electricity from things that would need to be put in potentially expensive landfills--what's wrong with that? If the same system could be used to dispose of municipal solid waste (and i dont see why not), landfills could become history. The syngas generated as a by-product (they plan to burn it on-site here, i think) could be used in vehicles, or just power plants. Landfills are major problems in third world countries, and a hassle in the US.

[sneakers180]

is this the same as plasma torch that westinghouse was sold to new york to clean up love canal- only to abandon it after wec guy carl anderson told bloomington indiana it was only for liquid hazardous waste?

[amazingdrx]

This sounds like nuclear industry hype motivated by politics and/or stock scamming.

A plasma torch would spread the nuclear waste into the byproducts. The gas used to generate the energy. And then into the air along with plenty of greenhouse gases.

This doesn't treat nuclear waste, it merely spreads it into the atmosphere. another "dump-it-in-the-ocean" type scam? Treatment equated to dilution. Dangerously ridiculous.

[Kit P.]

Amazingdrx, you have it backwards. This is a volume reduction technology. The radioactive solids are solidified in the glass. The organics are gasified.

It would appear that Amazingdrx is opposed to nuclear medicine. Rabid anti-nukes tried force commercial power plants out of business by making it expensive to dispose of radioactive waste without recognizing other sources of material.

The record of handling radioactive material from commercial nuclear plants is 100% safe in the US. The medical industry has a good record too. Huge benefit very small risk.

[amazingdrx]

How does the process filter radioactive elements out of the gas before it is burned in the turbines? If it combines garbage and radioactive waste, melts it with a plasma torch, then captures the gas for combustion, how would radioactive contaminants be restricted to the glass byproduct.

Would radioactive elements common to the gas be somehow separated? This would take the kind of gas diffusion separation used for uranium processing. Separate carbon 12 from carbon 14? Or similar radioactive isotopes from non-radioactive elements? Separate hydrogen from tritium?

This doesn't really treat rad waste or obtain energy from it as the atricle states. That lie is the tipoff in fact.

Any energy produced is from the garbage, not the radioactivity of the waste. That intentional obsfucation is what leads me to the conclusion that this is a scam.

[Nucbuddy]

Amazingdrx,

What would (unnatural) carbon-14 or tritium be doing in medical waste?
uic.com.au/nip26.htm

ISOTOPES USED IN MEDICINE

Reactor Radioisotopes

Molybdenum-99
Technetium-99m
Bismuth-213
Chromium-51
Cobalt-60
Copper-64
Dysprosium-165
Erbium-169
Holmium-166
Iodine-125
Iodine-131
Iridium-192
Iron-59
Lutetium-177
Palladium-103
Phosphorus-32
Potassium-42
Rhenium-186
Rhenium-188
Samarium-153
Selenium-75
Sodium-24
Strontium-89
Xenon-133
Ytterbium-169
Ytterbium-177
Yttrium-90

Radioisotopes of caesium, gold and ruthenium are also used in brachytherapy.

Cyclotron Radioisotopes

Carbon-11
Nitrogen-13
Oxygen-15
Fluorine-18
Cobalt-57
Gallium-67
Indium-111
Iodine-123
Krypton-81m
Rubidium-82
Strontium-92
Thallium-201

Well, there is carbon-11. But then, "carbon-11 has a half-life of only 20 minutes."

[amazingdrx]

Radioactive isotopes are created by ionizing radiation sources.

Carbon 14 is used as a medical tracer. But the major source of all these radioactive contaminants in so-called low level waste is the exposure to radiation.

I believe that the whole landfill in South Carolina is claimed to hold only low level waste (in leaking, unlined trenches). Including the core of that Michigan nuclear reactor. So nearly all rad waste is "low level"?

What would be high level waste? Plutonium? Hehehey. Parse those words buddy.

[Kit P.]

“Radioactive isotopes are created by ionizing radiation sources.”

Amazingdrx got it backwards. Actually, one source of ionizing radiation is radioactive isotopes. The sun, cosmic rays, and x-rays are others. Most radioactive isotopes are natural, those generated by man are carefully controlled to prevent needless exposure.

So, yes, most radioactive waste is low level. It is apparent that Amazingdrx does not understand the scientific principles involved in energy discussions. These topics are very complex. Furthermore, he assumes that he is being lied to rather than consider the more likely possibility that he is confused about the facts. The NRC has an excellent site where he can info carries legal penalties for lying.

[Udo Stenzel]

"What would be high level waste?"

Fission products, notably Sr-90 and Cs-137. But telling you that is a waste of time, isn't it, drx?

[Robin Smith]

This is awesome dude...That psot signifies the values of this post..For a healthy life style there should be protection in each organization. Thanks..

http://justblogme.com/workworkwork/250605/

[Investigation Services]

This is the very problem of each nation, how and where to dump their nuclear wastes safely. I think stopping the use of it solves the problem, I mean there is no smog when there is no fire.