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by floxy
332 days ago
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Seems like you are interested in section 5.2.4 of the paper: https://www.marathonfusion.com/alchemy.pdf > Since the process described here permanently transmutes mercury into a valuable material, it is possible that fusion transmutation could be considered as a form of waste disposal. While early plants will be highly incentivized to specifically transmute 198Hg, we note that the isotopes with higher neutron number can also in the long
term be transmuted to 197Au... >The EU also has 6000 tons of mercury currently and expects to need to dispose of 11,000 tons over the next 40 years [95, 96]. As such, even with no change in existing processes, 14,000 metric tons of mercury could be made available for processing and isotope removal in the next ten years of fusion development, corresponding to 1400 tons of 198Hg and about the same mass of 197Au, with a current market value of ∼ $140B. |
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I don't think that it is of much use as waste disposal because again, it can only remove 10%, i.e., an insignificant amount. If it were even mined because of this, then more mercury waste would be produced than before, but increased mining would probably be many decades or centuries in the future, as long as there is still waste to reuse.
So, how long would the current midterm stockpile of 1400 t for 198Hg for the next 10 years last? At 5 t per 1 GW per year, i.e., 5 t per 8.76 TWh, and a current global electricity generation of ~30 PWh, replacing all energy production with fusion would be able to transmute 3400 t 198Hg per year, over twice the stockpile. Of course, there would be a myriad of other bottlenecks long before that, but consuming all the existing stockpile seems feasible in human time spans.
I am honestly impressed by the amount of transmutation that is possible with fusion. And it is a lucky coincidence that the half-life is only dozens of hours for the middle product. I never thought of that process or would have guessed grams of production instead of tons, probably because of the association with existing particle accelerators. It is quite amazing, but also presumably still decades off into the future.