Salt water is dangerous coolant for nuclear energy

According to Alexandra Navrotsky, a professor at the University of California, Davis, Japan’s choice to use seawater at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was probably the best action to take at the time.But Navrotsky and others have since discovered a new way in which seawater can corrode nuclear fuel, forming uranium compounds that could potentially travel long distances, either in solution or as very small particles.

Uranium in nuclear fuel rods is in a chemical form that is pretty insoluble in water, unless the uranium is oxidized to uranium VI a process that can be facilitated when radiation converts water into peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent.

Peter Burns, professor of civil engineering and geological sciences at the University of Notre Dame and a co-author of the paper, had previously made spherical uranium peroxide clusters, rather like carbon “buckyballs,” that can dissolve or exist as solids.There is no data yet on how fast these uranium peroxide clusters will break down in the environment.