Technical Description of the Work Decommissioning of transuranic waste (TRU) into low-level radioactive waste (LLW) represents the largest cleanup cost associated with the nuclear weapons complex. This work is directed towards developing a low-cost plasma technology capable of converting TRU into LLW, based upon highly selective plasma etching of plutonium and other actinides from contaminated ...

In plasma-assisted deposition methods the activation energy necessary for the initiation of chemical reactions is transferred via charged particles. Due to this fact in many cases the process temperature can be kept small, if gas discharges at pressures below 1 hPa are used. On the other hand low pressure requires a great deal of vacuum equipment. Processes at atmospheric pressure are more favo...

Publisher's statement The following article appeared in NUMERICAL ANALYSIS AND APPLIED MATHEMATICS ICNAAM 2011: International Conference on Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, 19–25 September 2011, Halkidiki, (Greece), : 977-980 and may be found at http://dx.doi/org/10.1063/1.3637773 . The article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the au...