A team of scientists has discovered how to use californium in order to come up with new techniques to store and recycle radioactive waste.
Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt, a Florida State Professor, conducted experiments and found out that this element has the capability to divide and bond other materials. The team also found that californium is somewhat resistant to damage caused by radioactive elements.
"It's almost like snake oil," Albrecht-Schmitt told Phys.org. "It sounds almost too good to be true."
Although the discoveries are astounding, the team had some difficulties in obtaining the californium that was used in their experiments. Years of working for the U.S Department of Energy enabled Albrecht-Schmitt to be granted with five milligrams of the element. This amount of californium cost $1.4 million and was paid for through a donation to the university made to honor Gregory Choppin, a retired professor.
According to Albrecht-Schmitt, californium may be tiny, but it has tremendous potential in the field of nuclear chemistry. He explained that the element could be used in creating new containers for storing radioactive waste and may also help in separating fuel with radioactive properties. Using californium to separate fuel could be developed to a technology that will help us recycle fuel efficiently.
All of the experiments were done in Florida State University, but this research was a collaboration of many scientists. The team worked with at least nine institute and universities, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory from where the californium was sourced.
Aside from that, Ted Garner, a graduate student and professor of Chemistry David A. Dixon, both from the University of Alabama, gave the team the calculations that helped in analyzing why californium has bonding and divisive capabilities over other materials. Experts from the Argonne National Laboratory contributed their expertise in relating theories into the experiments while Evgeny Alekseev and Wulf Depmeier of Germany assisted the team in gaining a deeper understanding of californium's atomic structure.
This study was published in the March 23 issue of Nature Chemistry.
