British university researchers have turned their attention to deserted nuclear power plants and the tonnes of waste they still house despite long ago having closed down. What they have stumbled upon seems to store great potential, even when it comes to space travel.
University of Bristol researchers have developed and tested next-generation diamond batteries that exploit energy from radioactive materials, thereby sharpening the issue of nuclear waste recycling, the University website reads.
The first power plant that was looked into in terms of potentially applicable waste was the Berkeley Power Station in Gloucestershire, the UK. Although decommissioned back in 1989, it has only now been cleared of dangerous by-products.
For instance, carbon-14 isotopes extracted from graphite blocks, which the plant had previously manufactured, have been infused in a testing mode with wafer-thin diamonds to create the batteries.
The latter, researchers boast, can supply power on a “near-infinite basis” and be widely used in anything from the manufacturing of hearing aids and pacemakers, to boosting spacecraft capacities.
The potential is massive, indeed, the researchers argue, as in the UK alone, around 100,000 tonnes of nuclear waste are buried in the ground in the form of graphite blocks.
According to the academic, with quite a few of the UK’s nuclear power plants set to go offline in the years to come, chances are that the material on the ground will go for “so many great uses”.
The diamond batteries are already being tested in the most extreme conditions possible, with James Barker from the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Engineering, expressing positive expectations from the breakthrough:
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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