Transmutation prospect of long-lived nuclear waste induced by high-charge electron beam from laser plasma accelerator

Abstract

Photo-transmutation of long-lived nuclear waste induced by high-charge relativistic electron beam (e-beam) from laser plasma accelerator is demonstrated. Collimated relativistic e-beam with a high charge of approximately 100 nC is produced from high-intensity laser interaction with near-critical-density (NCD) plasma. Such e-beam impinges on a high-Z convertor and then radiates energetic bremsstrahlung photons with flux approaching 10^{11} per laser shot. Taking long-lived radionuclide ^{126}Sn as an example, the resulting transmutation reaction yield is the order of 10^{9} per laser shot, which is two orders of magnitude higher than obtained from previous studies. It is found that at lower densities, tightly focused laser irradiating relatively longer NCD plasmas can effectively enhance the transmutation efficiency. Furthermore, the photo-transmutation is generalized by considering mixed-nuclide waste samples, which suggests that the laser-accelerated high-charge e-beam could be an efficient tool to transmute long-lived nuclear waste.

13 pages, 8 figures, it has been submitted to Physics of Plasma

References in corpus (5)

• Generating multi-GeV electron bunches using single stage laser wakefield acceleration in a 3D nonlinear regime
• Modelling Gamma Ray Emission and Pair Production in High-Intensity Laser-Matter Interactions
• Ultra-high brilliance multi-MeV $\gamma$-ray beam from non-linear Thomson scattering
• Photo-transmutation of long-lived radionuclide Cs-135 by laser-plasma driven electron source
• Resonant photonuclear isotope detection using medium-energy photon beam

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Development of Gated Fiber Detectors for Laser-Induced Strong Electromagnetic Pulse Environments
• Generation of arbitrarily polarized muon pairs via polarized $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ collision
• Photonuclear treatment for spent fuel radiotoxicity reduction: a case study investigation on minor actinides
• Enhanced quantum radiation with flying-focus laser pulses