Radioactivity Neutralization Methods
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Dr. Radha Roy’s Transmutation Process was Viciously Suppressed The problem of radioactive waste disposal is the paramount environmental issue of our time. There is already much irretrievable radioactive pollution worldwide that will plague the earth’s biosphere for millennia to come and threatens the gene pool of thousands of future generations. The nuclear waste problem is totally unresolved. There are no sites, no containers and no places on earth that can safely contain radioactive waste materials. No container will outlive the radioactivity of its contents. Areas contaminated with radioactive waste are uninhabitable for the lifetime of their radioactive contents, which can amount to half a million years. Unless a process for transmuting radioactive wastes is developed, the best that we can hope for is above ground disposal sites managed by responsible people with valid monitoring systems. It is impossible to monitor radioactive waste that has been dumped into rivers or the ocean, buried in the ground or shot into space. What kind of legacy are we leaving our children and their children? Is there hope? Yes, but only if we develop a process for transmuting radioactive materials to harmless products invented by the late Dr. Radha Roy. Dr. Radha R. Roy was Professor Emeritus Nuclear Physics, Arizona State University. Dr. Roy's specialty was: "Experimental nuclear physics with emphasis on ionization of electron and positron, scattering of electron and positron. Interactions of photons with matter involving photoelectric effect, compton effect, pair, triplet, and multiplet production. Nuclear reactions and energy levels of nuclei. Fission of uranium and californium. Nuclear instrumentation." Dr. Roy was also designer and former director of the nuclear physics research facilities at the University of Brussels in Belgium and at Pennsylvania State University. Builder and Director of the Brussels Physical lab for eight years, he was an associate of the daughter of physicist Madame Curie and an associate of the elite nuclear physicists in Europe. Dr. Roy was an internationally known nuclear physicist, consultant, and the author of over 60 articles and several books. He was also a contributing author of many invited articles in a prestigious encyclopedia. He was cited in American Men and Women of Science, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and the International Biographical Centre, England. He won a variety of awards. He spent 52 years in European and American universities researching and writing recognized books on nuclear physics. He had supervised many doctoral students. It was the March 28, 1979 Ten Mile Island nuclear power reactor partial meltdown (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident) that moved Dr. Roy to spend the summer school break proving calculations to see if it was possible to cost-effectively transmute high-level nuclear waste. He found it could be done with existing infrastructure, commercially available machinery and current supporting technology. Roy invented a process for transmuting radioactive nuclear isotopes to harmless, stable isotopes. This process is viable not only for high-level nuclear waste from reactors but also for low-level radioactive waste products. The process does not require storage of radioactive materials. There is no need for new equipment. All of the equipment and chemical separation processes needed are already well known. In addition, as the treated isotope rapidly decays into a non-radioactive element, heat is produced which can power the existing electric generators at each nuclear power plant where nuclear waste is stored in cooling ponds. A newspaper editor persuaded Dr. Roy to release his Roy process to the press which was published in November of 1979. Roy announced his transmutation process and received international attention. The Roy process does not require storage of radioactive materials. What`s the basis for the Roy process? If you examine radioactive elements such as strontium-90, cesium- 137 and plutonium-239, you will see that they all have too many neutrons. To put it very simply, the Roy process transmutes these unstable isotopes to stable ones by knocking out the extra neutrons. When a neutron is removed, the resulting isotope has a considerably shorter half-life which then decays to a stable form in a reasonable amount of time. How do we knock out neutrons? By bombarding them with photons (produced as x-rays) in a high- powered electron linear accelerator. Before this process, the isotopes must be separated by a well-known chemical process. These portable units could be built and transported to hazardous sites of radioactive waste. Dr. Roy completed the quantum electrodynamic calculations for three isotopes: Pu-239, Sr-90, and Cs-137....all others treated similarly. To give an example, cesium-137 with a half-life of 30.17 years is transmuted into cesium-136 with a half-life of 13 days. Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,300 years is transmuted into plutonium-237 with a half-life of 45.6 days. Subsequent radioactive elements which will be produced from the decay of plutonium-237 can be treated in the same way as above until the stable element is formed. The Roy process could be developed in three distinct phases, according to Roy. Phase I consists of a theoretical feasibility study of the process to obtain needed parameters for the construction of a prototype machine. Phase II will involve the construction of a prototype machine and supporting facilities for demonstrating the process. Phase Ill will consist of the construction of large-scale commercial plants based on the data obtained from Phase II. Cost estimates for Phase I and II were in the neighborhood of $10 million. For Phase Ill, Roy estimated a cost of $70 million. Says Roy, “It will be interesting to do a cost analysis of eliminating nuclear waste by using my process and by burying it for 240,000 years – ten half-lives of plutonium – under strict scientific control. There is also an ethical question: Can we really burden the thousands of generations yet to come with problems which we have created? There is no God among human beings who can guarantee how the geological structure of waste burial regions will change even after ten thousand years, not to mention 240,000 years." Transmuting high-level waste would also guarantee international security by eliminating bomb-grade elements. A Final Note To those who say that a process for transforming nuclear wastes is an invitation to keep making them, I ask, when we find a cure for cancer, shall we say it`s okay to continue to eat, drink and breathe carcinogens? "There is no way one can change nuclear structure other than by nuclear reaction. Burial of nuclear waste is not a solution." Radha R. Roy, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus Nuclear Physics For more information, please contact: Dennis F. Nester (agent for the late Dr. Roy) 4510 E. Willow Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85032 (602) 494-9361 theroyprocess@cox.net The Roy process patent application, apparatus and theory, which include the completed calculations for transmuting Pu-239, Sr-90 and Cs-137, can only be seen by scientists representing a company capable of realization who contracts with us. Counter point on transmuting nuclear waste: Transmuting nuclear waste is an old idea looked at decades ago, and then discarded by the scientific communities. The reason was simple. Waste is a soup of thousands of unstable nuclei. EACH one would have to have a pure beam of particles hitting it in order to induce a transition to a lower state. Thus, you would have to a) chemically process all the waste – tediously separating out thousands of dangerous chemicals b) hit each one with a very fine-tuned energy of radiation in order to induce a transition. As you can see, the problem is staggering. It is prohibitively expensive, and probably won't even work even if you spent billions and billions of dollars. Although in today's new fast growth in science and the Internet, a new science might turn the old ways into new possibilities. Anonymous.
I hope you will add my 'rebuttal' below to the GDR web page. Dr. Roy suffered much for the Roy process, and it is a terrible disservice to him and the world who desperately need the Roy process, to let an 'anonymous' so-called scientist (dismiss) the Roy process of which they have little knowledge. Dr. Roy told me there should be a cost analysis done comparing the Roy process and burying nuclear waste for the necessary 480,000 years – 20 half-lives of Pu-239. Regards Dennis F. Nester Rebuttal to: Counter Point on Transmuting Nuclear Waste by {Anonymous} I knew Dr. Roy for ten years, during which time I typed up the first manuscript of his yet unpublished autobiography. Dr. Roy was a world leading nuclear physicist, first to discover fission particles, author of physics books used in universities worldwide, and author of invited articles in encyclopedia. He was a serious scientist who knew the nuclear industry from the ground up. This "anonymous" person has no knowledge about the Roy process. It remains secret for the benefit of industries who need exclusive patent rights for commercialization. Dr. Roy very well knew good science MUST BE cost effective, or it is no good, obviously. Dr. Roy was very famous in Europe, a fellow of the Curie Institute. He would NEVER embarrass his awesome credentials by announcing new science to the press, if he had any doubts about its feasibility and cost effectiveness. Nuclear waste has become a multi-billion dollar economy. See: http://headlines.igc.apc.org:8080/enheadlines/975378903/index_html Corporate welfare for scientists. According to Public Citizen: http://www.citizen.org/CMEP/RAGE/radwaste/prtransmutation.htm The government’s Los Alamos (neutron) transmutation proposal, which IS NOT the Roy process, only partially reduces half-lives and 'creates' more nuclear waste which they then bury only to leak out or explode in time anyway. The DOE wants $280 billion over 117 years "to successfully implement the program" that does not work! Talk about double dipping! There should be a Nuke-gate Congressional investigation! Dr. Roy was offered $5 million dollars by a group of lawyers representing a large company. Dr. Roy was about to sign contracts and told these lawyers he would be available to their company as consultant. Then these lawyers told Dr. Roy, "It is not going to be developed." They wanted to buy it....to kill it! Dr. Roy expelled these lawyers and began getting death threats! I hope GDR will not publish "anonymous" incompetent critics who simply don't know what they are talking about in the future. Sincerely, Dennis F. Nester Send your comments to, CommentsDrRoy@gdr.org
The nuclear waste problem is totally unresolved. There are no sites, no containers and no places on earth that can safely contain radioactive waste materials. No container will outlive the radioactivity of its contents. Areas contaminated with radioactive waste are uninhabitable for the lifetime of their radioactive contents, which can amount to half a million years. Unless a process for transmuting radioactive wastes is developed, the best that we can hope for is above ground disposal sites managed by responsible people with valid monitoring systems. It is impossible to monitor radioactive waste that has been dumped into rivers or the ocean, buried in the ground or shot into space. What kind of legacy are we leaving our children and their children? Is there hope? Yes, but only if we develop a process for transmuting radioactive materials to harmless products invented by the late Dr. Radha Roy (see above). Introduction This article addresses nuclear waste contamination from ionizing radiation, the kind produced by nuclear plants, nuclear tests, medical procedures, food irradiators, facilities that sterilize via the use of radiation, and research facilities using radioactive isotopes. I will present a viable but yet untested process for transforming nuclear wastes to stable non-radioactive products — the Roy process (see above). There are at least 121 nuclear reactors in the United States (as of 2011). Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste A typical nuclear power plant in a year generates 20 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. The nuclear power industry generates a total of about 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year. Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced about 62,500 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about seven yards deep. This tonnage does not include low-level wastes — materials that come in contact with radioactive substances. These wastes, such as gloves, filters, tools and clothing, come from nuclear power plants, hospitals and research centers that use radioactive substances. There are 100,000 U.S. facilities that use these materials. They produce 1.6 million cubic feet of low-level wastes each year. Describing the contamination of earth by radiation as low-level ionizing radiation is misleading and implies that it is insignificant. It’s not. Low-level ionizing radiation means 5-15 reins (similar to a rad) or about what we all get each year if we don’t work in a nuclear plant. Dr. John Gofman, a pioneer on the health effects of ionizing radiation, calls this the doubling dose, the dose required to double the cancer rate. More worrisome is Dr. Abram Petkau’s observation that it takes only 700 millirads of protracted radiation (from external or internal sources) to lyse (break) the cell membrane. By protracted, I mean over a period of time, instead of all at once. In the absence of antioxidant enzyme protection, such as superoxide dismutase and catalase, a mere 10-20 millirads were required to destroy the cell membrane. P.S., We’re all deficient in antioxidant enzymes because there’s much more radiation-induced free radical damage than nature intended, thanks to the nuclear industry. There has been no viable solution to the nuclear waste disposal problem. It is the greatest of all disposal problems, and not just because of clean-up costs. Radioactive waste sites are virtually uninhabitable for the lifetime of the radioactive materials contained, which can amount to thousands of years. There are no containers which will last as long as the radioactive materials stored in them, thereby promising leakage of the radioactivity into the water, soil and air. The U.S. government and the Department of Energy (DOE) are faced with enormous volumes of radioactive waste, with no solution of how to store them. An April 8, 1992, article in The Arizona Republic reported the results of an eight-month study by the Environmental Protection Agency on radioactive sites in the United States. The EPA designated 45,361 locations, including factories and hospitals, with nuclear waste contamination ranging from slight to severe. Costs of the Nuclear Industry Despite a one-half-trillion-dollar subsidy to the nuclear power and weapons industry over the last 40 years, nuclear power is a dismal economic failure and a safety nightmare. Here are some examples to illustrate the severity of these problems – both financial and safety. On July 4, 1990, the DOE estimated costs for nuclear cleanup to be $31 billion over the following five years. This figure represents a 50% increase over 1989 projections. In 1991, DOE revised this estimate to $100 billion. I gasp at the thought of what today’s estimate would be (2011). During the last 10 years the nuclear industry and the federal government have spent $6 billion on a plan to store 77,000 metric tons of radioactive waste in tunnels bored into the granite bedrock of Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The San Jose Mercury-News reported on July 14, 1992, that a June earthquake caused $1 million in damage to a Department of Energy building six miles from the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, Nevada. DOE scientists were rattled to discover that the epicenter of the quake was 12 miles from the proposed dump site. In 1991, mining experts reported that a deep underground salt chamber in the New Mexico desert designated for the first U.S. tests of permanent radioactive waste disposal would probably collapse years before the tests could be completed. The $800 million DOE nuclear-waste disposal project was already years behind schedule when this ominous projection was made (June 14, 1991, The Arizona Republic). Where Does the Waste GO? Nuclear waste has been dumped into oceans, rivers and lakes, and into the ground. Leaking containers of radioactive wastes add to this on a daily basis, endangering the earth’s groundwater. There is no permanent storage site that is free from the hazards of radioactive waste. The following examples are given to indicate the serious and unsolved nature of the nuclear waste crisis: Port Granby, Canada, dump site: Port Granby, east of Oshawa, Canada, is one of three landfills in the Port Hope area storing radioactive waste from a nearby uranium processing plant. Over 40 years, more than half-a-million tons of radioactive waste was buried in 122 14-foot pits in the Port Granby dump. Years of public outcry forced the closing of the dump in 1988. Despite efforts to capture the seepage, radioactive groundwater from this site makes its way down the bluffs, where the current carries it towards Toronto. A greater fear are the cliffsides that are eroding. One day, the bluffs will send chunks of the dump site crashing into the water. Currently, anti-dump activists debate with nuclear officials over the perilous dump site, with no solution at hand. (New Magazine, Toronto, March 1993). Russian Dumping: On September 2, 3, and 4, 1992, the Los Angeles Times reported on “The Soviets’ Deadly Nuclear Legacy.” From 1966 to 1991, the Russians dumped nuclear wastes into rivers, lakes and into the ocean. Russia’s deadly atomic legacy is just now coming to light in a report issued in March 1993 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. From 1949 to 1956, nuclear waste from plutonium refining was dumped into the Techa River, even though radioactivity began showing up 1000 miles downstream in 1953. Today, gamma radiation on the river bank measures 100 times normal levels. Aware of the radioactivity in the Techa, Russian workers began dumping into Lake Karachai. Today, “to stand on its bank, even for a short time, would be deadly,” according to Mira Kosenko, M.D., of the Chelyabinsk Institute of Physics and Biology. The Russians dumped at least 15 used nuclear reactors including six submarine units containing uranium fuel into the Kara Sea. According to Andrei Zolotkov, a radiation safety engineer, the entire hull section of the obsolete nuclear-powered icebreaker V.1. was cut out with blowtorches and sunk. The irradiated mass measured 65 by 65 by 35 feet, or as high as a five-story building. The results of this are now evident. Officials at the Northern Division of the Polar Institute of Fish and Oceanography in Arkhangelsk report that thousands of seals are dying of cancer. This was caused by radioactive pollution of the seabed plus fallout from Russian nuclear tests on Novaya Zemyla, the archipelago where the seals live. Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, Colorado: On March 26, 1992, Rockwell International Corporation, operator of the Rocky Flats plant pleaded guilty to criminal violations of hazardous-waste laws and the illegal discharging of radioactive wastes into two streams that feed water supplies serving four Colorado cities. The government fined Rockwell $20 million and selected EG&G, Inc. as the new plant operator (Thursday, March 26, 1992, The Arizona Republic). The Hanford, Washington, crisis: A new EPA analysis revealed that Hanford workers dumped millions of gallons of radioactive waste into the ground. Some of the wastes were injected deep into the earth, while others were dumped into open trenches or ponds which were later covered with dirt. These wastes contain two long-lived carcinogens – technetium-99 and iodine-129. Technetium-99 has a half-life of 212,000 years, and iodine-129 a half-life of 16 million years. Because Hanford is located close to the Columbia River, radioactive isotopes continue to flow into the river. In addition, storage tanks at Hanford are in danger of exploding due to continuous production of extremely reactive, labile products. This serious situation is described below. Current Legal Methods of Nuclear Waste Storage There are two storage methods. The most common is to store the radioactive waste in water pools made of reinforced concrete six feet thick lined with stainless steel. The second method is to store the material in dry casks which are transported by rail, truck or barge to outdoor storage sites where they are placed on 3-foot reinforced concrete pads. Current Dump Sites (1997) The 1980 plan for waste storage has unraveled. In this plan, the federal government would be responsible for high-level waste and states would take responsibility for low-level wastes. States could build their own waste sites or form compacts with other states to share common repositories. However, states encountered massive opposition when possible locations were chosen. The problem is unsolved. The only two current disposal sites, in Richland, Washington, and Barnwell, South Carolina, are nearing capacity and will have to shut down. Wastes not allowed to go there are piling up in makeshift storage facilities across the United States. Currently, there are more than 100 makeshift sites in 41 states where nuclear waste is being stored in cooling pools. Many of these sites are in developing areas and some are near businesses, residential area and schools. The fight over dump sites continues. As of Tuesday, April 1997, the Senate voted (65-34) to establish a temporary central storage facility for the nation’s 33,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas. President Clinton is expected to veto it. If he does, the question of what to do with nuclear garbage will remain unanswered. Opponents emphasize the danger of transporting hazardous nuclear waste through populated areas by rail or highways and believe that a temporary site in Nevada will lead to a permanent facility there. This temporary site would be above ground, but there is a proposed permanent storage location underground in the same area. This proposal is fraught with controversy. The DOE says that four more years of study are needed before making a final decision. Why? An earthquake of magnitude 5.9 on the Richter scale occurred on June 29, 1992, just six miles from the proposed burial site. Since then, federal officials have had major problems convincing people that nothing can go wrong at their proposed nuclear dump site. Senator Richard Bryan (Democrat - Nevada) said of this quake, “Mother Nature delivered a wake-up call to America’s policy-makers. Placing high-level radioactive nuclear waste in an active earthquake zone defies common sense.” (San Jose Mercury News, Tuesday, July 14, 1992) Most people are unaware of how grim it is to have 33,000 tons of radioactive garbage which will take from 30 to 480,000 years to decay to a harmless substance. However, the government knows. That’s why their policy says that radioactive waste must be stored at least 10,000 years, even though this is hardly realistic. Let me explain. The range of half-lives of these materials varies from 24 seconds to nearly 15.9 million years. (Ultimately after a uranium atom fissions, a total of about 300 isotopes result as various isotopes decay to other isotopes of longer half-lives. Vesperman) The half-life of a radioactive element is the time it takes it to decay to one-half of its mass. The whole lifetime of a radioactive element is its half-life times 20 years. This makes the situation grim. For example, the half-life of strontium-90 is 28 years. Multiplying this by 20 gives you a lifetime of 560 years. For plutonium-239 with its half-life of 24,000 years, has a whole-life of 20 X 24,000 or 480,000 years. Cesium-137 with its half-life of 30 years will hang around for 600 years. “Do not be surprised if you learn that the nuclear industry makes billions of dollars by being a part of government’s policy of burial of nuclear wastes. It is not in their financial interest to try any other process. They are not idealists.” (Radha R. Roy, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus Nuclear Physics) What’s Wrong with Storing Nuclear Waste Above Ground Although above-ground storage has the advantage of access to being monitored, it is still not without unsolved dangers. Nuclear waste is highly unstable and reactive. For example, at Hanford, Washington, radioactive wastes were stored in million-gallon tanks while awaiting a permanent (?) storage site (lots of luck!). These tanks contain plutonium wastes and organic materials. Chemicals in the tanks break down, producing hydrogen gas, increasing pressure inside the tanks. This lays the conditions for an explosion, which would spread contaminants into the atmosphere, the land and the water, not to mention the people and the animals. In 1957, similar waste storage tanks exploded at the Russian Mayak plutonium plant and contaminated hundreds of square miles in the southern UraI mountains. According to a Thursday, January 28, 1993, Washington Post article, this explosion released two million curies over a huge territory, leading to the resettlement of 10,700 people. This disaster caused thousands of casualties. In April 1993, several newspapers reported that yet another tank of radioactive waste exploded at a weapons plant in the secret Siberian city of Tomsk-7. This explosion contaminated 2,500 acres and exposed firefighters to dangerous levels of radiation. Tomsk-7 is believed to be about 12 miles outside Tomsk, a city of half-a-million people. Since Tomsk-7 is secret, it is not on ordinary maps (The Arizona Republic, April 7; The Washington Post, April 8, 14; The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, April 7, 8, 1993). What’s Wrong with Storing Nuclear Waste Below the Ground? Only two problems: #1, there is no material that will outlast its radioactive contents; #2, radioactive wastes are so active that their contents continuously produce heat, hydrogen gas and other labile products. Who will monitor this for 10,000 years? How will the contents be stabilized to prevent explosions and leakage of radioactive waste into the groundwater? Who will pay the astronomical costs? However, during the 1980s burial became the official government policy, despite the objections of many scientists, and national organizations concerned about dangers to the environment. (See “Deep Underground Burial” below.) Original article published Summer 1993; Updated May, 1997. Lita Lee, Ph.D.; www.litalee.com ; Lita@LitaLee.com More information link: http://earthchamber11.blogspot.com/2011/04/neutralizing-nuclear-waste-roy-process.html You may wonder why you have never heard of this unique piece of science, this discovery: "With the Roy process, high-level nuclear waste can be neutralized and totally eliminated at each reactor site, where the waste is now stored in cooling ponds. When treated with the Roy process, these unstable radioactive isotopes rapidly decay into stable, non-radioactive elements creating heat in the process which can be used to generate steam to power existing electric generators." Thirty-two years ago Dr. Roy shared with the world that nuclear waste could be neutralized and eliminated.... began speaking out against 'nuclear power'. For Dr. Roy storage of nuclear waste underground is not an option. With the plutonium dissolved in a solution for storage in containers, heat is generated from the process of the continual breakdown of the nuclear radiation. The containers would have to be cooled for 250,000 years. It can't be done... Dr. Roy said there is a solution for the greatest environmental crisis facing the planet (see above). The reason the nuclear industrial complex do not like this discovery is because it is one step away from effectively rendering their fear and terror 'nuclear mega power' into a neutral and non-active state. Dr. Roy's discovery could lead to a peaceful yet powerful way of deactivating Plutonium "The Lord of Darkness". If brilliant minds took this further then there is a safe and fundamental way to alter radioactive elements rendering them harmless or neutralizing them altogether. The key word is TRANSMUTE .. the process of transmutation would effectively end the dominance and fear of man-made nuclear weapons, nuclear power stations and nuclear waste. As soon as you understand a chemical or nuclear process and you understand its nature, then you also understand what neutralizes that process. The nature of man-made nuclear radiation is designed to be out-of-control. It is the out-of-control nature of this science that makes the reaction so attractive to those who seek power through greater forms of destruction and the resulting fear. Take away 'out of control' and the elements no longer provide that power to those who would wield it. I predict that scientists and physicists in the years ahead will re-discover and apply the transmutation of dangerous elements into harmless forms that nature can easily digest and recycle. Until then ... it is important to understand 'the lie' ... and why the lie exists. Sources: http://www.lightparty.com/Energy/Radioactive.html http://earthchamber11.blogspot.com/2011/04/neutralizing-nuclear-waste-roy-process.html http://www.litalee.com/shopexd.asp?id=478 http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5552 http://www.gdr.org/photontransmutation.html
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