Seven Big-Thinking Proposals For Dealing With Nuclear Waste
Nuclear Waste Meets Its Match Northwestern researchers have found a material that filters the radioactive cesium ions out of nuclear waste. Stefan KühnNuclear energy is looking like it will be a big part of a fossil-fuel-free future in the U.S. But the big question remains as big as ever: What's to be done with the waste it generates? In our Future of the Environment issue, we mentioned one visionary's suggestions: self-sinking tungsten spheres that stash spent nuclear fuel deep beneath the Earth's surface. That idea is a long way from reality, but in our green-energy-starved present, it may be worth considering all options, no matter how wacky. Here are a few other pie-in-the-sky ideas. Click to launch the photo gallery Nuclear reactors create high-level nuclear waste, composed of spent fuel rods loaded with the still-radioactive isotopes created when uranium-235 fissions. Some of those isotopes, like cesium-137 and strontium-90, have half-lives...