Nuclear security

Nuclear risk calculation and faith in human ingenuity

...India announced an important step forward at the International Atomic Energy Agency's general conference in September 2014—namely, the commissioning of an actinide separation demonstration facility at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Tarapur. The facility, according to Ratan Kumar Sinha, then–chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, separates "minor actinides from … high-level waste," a process that might reduce the life of radioactive waste "from around 1,000 years to about 300 years." Separation also reduces the volume of high-level waste that requires long-term storage. Moreover, "technology has been developed and demonstrated for the removal of highly radioactive [cesium]-137 and its conversion to [a form] usable for blood irradiator[s] and similar low–dose rate radiation applications." I maintain faith in human ingenuity and its ability to identify solutions to problems that today may seem intractable.