Dec. 10, 1997 ROLLA, MO. -- Glass may be the answer to safely
dispose of nuclear waste, says a University of Missouri-Rolla
who recently received a patent for his research efforts to
encapsulate plutonium in a special type of glass. Dr. Delbert E.
Day, Curators' Professor of ceramic engineering at UMR, received
the patent from the United States Patent Office for his research
into ways to dispose of excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear
weapons. Day's method involves the use of a special iron
phosphate glass to chemically dissolve the nuclear waste. Day,
also a senior research investigator in UMR's Graduate Center for
Materials Research, says it will take several decades and
billions of dollars to dispose of all the radioactive waste that
was created from the production of nuclear weapons and
electricity in the United States during the past 50 years. But a
special family of glasses hold promise as the means to safely
dispose of much of the waste. The U.S. Department of Energy
awarded UMR a three-year grant