Laser-driven photo-transmutation of¹²⁹I—a long-lived nuclear waste product

Abstract

Intense laser-plasma interactions produce high brightness beams of gamma rays, neutrons and ions and have the potential to deliver accelerating gradients more than 1000 times higher than conventional accelerator technology, and on a tabletop scale. This paper demonstrates one of the exciting applications of this technology, namely for transmutation studies of long-lived radioactive waste. We report the laser-driven photo- transmutation of long-lived I-129 with a half-life of 15.7 million years to I-128 with a half-life of 25 min. In addition, an integrated cross-section of 97+/-40 mbarns for the reaction I-129(gamma,n)I-128 is determined from the measured ratio of the (gamma,n) induced I-128 and I-126 activities. The potential for affordable, easy to shield, tabletop laser technology for nuclear transmutation studies is highlighted.