[extropy-chat] Stupid luddites oppose home cyclotrons...

[Robert Bradbury]

As a followup...  Sometime over the last year or so I got interested in
Gd-148 and did some research on it.  Dr. R. Karen Corzine (now Karen
Kelly?), who was/is a nuclear physicist at Los Alamos, who is perhaps one of
the world experts on Gd-148 synthesis in accelerators (like cyclotrons) was
a bit surprised to learn that it was the preferred fuel for nanorobots. At
the time I was investigating whether we could turn nuclear waste (currently
the stuff slated for Yucca mountain) into Gd-148.  Karen seemed to feel that
building lower mass elements (e.g. Ba/I/Sn/Xe) up to Gd-148 would be easier
than splitting heavier elements (in the waste) down into Gd-148.  She did
not explain the best method for doing the synthesis and I didn't take the
research as far as reading her papers to see if the details were in them.

Of course, if one has lots of nuclear waste and energy is relatively cheap,
finding ways of transmuting it into Gd-148 [1] is one way of achieving the
nanotechnologist's "Alchemist's Dream" (turning "lead" into "gold") [2].

A key component of this is having single proton/neutron massometers (also in
NM V. I) that can perform inexpensive, rapid, high volume separation of
isotopes (read "nano-scale parallelization") into pure isotope streams to
feed into the accelerators.  [Pure isotope streams are required to have the
desired nuclear reactions take place most of the time.]

So once nanotechnology engineering becomes sufficiently robust the entire
nuclear waste longevity concern used against nuclear power tends to become a
specious/red herring argument.

Of course the ultimate goal for nanotechnological & nuclear based
transmutation for those interested in human body longevity is to remove the
endo-radioisotopes (40K, 14C, T & 226Ra) and the most dangerous
exo-radioisotope (222Rn) entirely from the human body, water & food supplies
and the inhabited environment.  Ref [3] provides a relatively brief (but
interesting) discussion of various radioisotopes.

Robert

1. 138Ba and 137Ba  would be relatively abundant natural isotopes that could
be converted to 148Gd but the actual cost depends upon the nuclear reactions
required.  Radioactive waste isotopes such as 137Cs and 129I should also not
be particularly difficult to convert either.  Radioisotopes (in waste or the
environment) such as 90Sr, 60Co, 99Tc and [various]Pu & 141Am would be
somewhat more difficult because the number of build-up/break-down reactions
are likely to be greater..

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone

3. http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm
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