On the list of top ten things we wished had never been invented, plastic is the no.1. Each year roughly 8 million tons of plastic has to be dumped into oceans. On the other hand, each year enormous quantities of radioactive waste which contain the most dangerous materials are created by nuclear power generation. Both types of pollution are notorious for the long-lasting global effects.
In Chinese, there is a strategy which is translated as "To set a thief to catch a thief.", or "To cure poisoning by poison". So, there might be a way to "control (one type of) pollution by (another type of) pollution".
It is well known that radiation or high energy beams are used to decompose polymers. However, I don't know how effective those radioactive waste materials are for degradation of polymers. Suppose they are effective, then deposit of nuclear waste surrounded by plastic waste might be a solution to both types of pollution.
There is still another way -- to design new polymers that can be easily decomposed by radiation.
Some 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012. Recovery and recycling, however, remain insufficient, and millions of tons of plastics end up in landfills and oceans each year.
As a matter of principle, recycling of plastic waste is a better option than energy recovery or landfilling. Although under a life cycle perspective not all plastic waste may be suitable for recycling, there are no technical reasons why plastic should go to landfill rather than being recycled or exploited for energy recovery.
The preferred strategy for the management of all radioactive waste is to contain it (i.e. to confine the radionuclides to within the waste matrix, the packaging and the disposal facility) and to isolate it from the accessible biosphere.
Sergei,
Thank you so much for the links. This is so exciting. I havn't look at them yet. There is a will and there is a way. My thinking is that we should develop radiation-sensitve plastic materials, and hopefully there is a chain reaction of degradation in the plastic waste triggered by radiation. Of course if you look in all details there are so many challenges, but who knows? There might be a genius who find a way to save the earth!
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