{"id":12254,"date":"2014-09-08T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=12254"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:12:23","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:12:23","slug":"hitachi-developing-reactor-that-burns-nuclear-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/hitachi-developing-reactor-that-burns-nuclear-waste","title":{"rendered":"Hitachi developing reactor that burns nuclear waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gizmag.com\/author\/david-szondy\/\" rel=\"author\">David Szondy<\/a> \u2014 Gizmag<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The problem with nuclear waste is that it needs to be stored for many thousands of years before it\u2019s safe, which is a tricky commitment for even the most stable civilization. To make this situation a bit more manageable, Hitachi, in partnership with MIT, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley, is working on new reactor designs that use transuranic nuclear waste for fuel; leaving behind only short-lived radioactive elements.<\/p>\n<p>In popular imagination, nuclear waste is a wildly radioactive goo that glows like the back end of a lightning bug. But in real life, the real problem of nuclear waste isn\u2019t the \u201chot\u201d stuff, but the mildly radioactive elements with atomic numbers greater than 92. That\u2019s because highly radioactive elements have short half lives. That is, they burn themselves out very quickly \u2013 sometimes in a matter of minutes or even seconds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gizmag.com\/hitachi-reactor\/33585\/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&amp;utm_campaign=7b7ef0c546-UA-2235360-4&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_65b67362bd-7b7ef0c546-91667501\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By David Szondy \u2014 Gizmag The problem with nuclear waste is that it needs to be stored for many thousands of years before it\u2019s safe, which is a tricky commitment for even the most stable civilization. To make this situation a bit more manageable, Hitachi, in partnership with MIT, the University of Michigan, and the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46892,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12254\/revisions\/46892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}