| Since the start of the nuclear age, weapons testing and commercial nuclear power plants have been producing radioactive iodine-129 as a fission by-product. Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days and is generally not deemed a serious storage problem. Iodine-129 has a half-life of sixteen million years and decays by Beta emission.; The Department of Energy (DOE) has determined there are three major contributors to public radiation dose as a consequence of radionuclides releases. The three isotopes of major concern for the DOE are iodine-129, technetium-99 and neptunium-237 (129I, 99Tc, 237Np). DOE has a research and development program called the "National Department of Energy Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative" to recover and transmute iodine-129 to a stable isotope of xenon (130Xe) in which UNLV program is the "Transmutation Reprocessing Program" (TRP).; This research explores the use of hitherto unexplored materials to trap iodine from nuclear fuel reprocessing, by either using Natural Organic Matter (NOM) or Fullerene Carbon Compounds (FCCs) for immobilization or conversion to a suitable target for nuclear transmutation. |
