CANBERRA, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Australian scientists have found a new and cheaper way to filter and safely store nuclear waste.
Zhu Huaiyong, Associate Professor of School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), told Xinhua on the telephone on Friday that the research team led by him has discovered how to create nanofibres, which are millionths of a millimetre in size and can permanently lock away radioactive ions by displacing the existing sodium ions in the fibre.
"We have created ceramic nanofibres which attract and trap radioactive cations (positively charged ions), possibly forever," he said.
According to Zhu, the ceramic material can last a very long time, much longer than the radioactivity of a radioactive ion. However, other material such as plastic or steel, could not last longer than the radioactivity.
The discovery was particularly important as the world increased its reliance on nuclear energy, Zhu said.
The professor, who finished his higher education in China, said water is used to cool nuclear reactors and during the mining and purification of nuclear material, so waste water is a big problem. If the waste was stored conventionally in lakes or steel containers, there was a danger it could leak and pollute the land around it.
The ceramic nanofibres were made from titanium dioxide, a mineral found abundantly in Australia and used to color white paint. The ceramic nanofibres they have found was also more chemically stable than metal, could last much longer and was much cheaper to make than steel.
"The fibres are in very thin layers, less than one nanometre in width, and the radioactive ions are attracted into the space between the layers," he said.
