This emerging technlogy from Bristol Universities Chemists and Physicists looks like a great future way to reduce the pile of nuclear waste offering a solution for the 95,000 tonnes of graphite blocks that the UK is storing following their use in reactors. The idea is that Carbon 14 from irradiated graphite is combined with industrial diamond to make a battery.
It won’t be for free – production of industrial diamonds requires high energy input (being done at pressures and temperatures in the range 4.5–6.0 GPa and 1127–1527 centigrade) so making all the carbon 14 in our waste stockpile into batteries is going to require a massive amount of energy over a long period.
Any expert comment on when this technology will start production would be very interesting!