| Ed. Note: The original letter from Mr. Carter has been shortened for publication. The Editor: It was with great interest that I read the paper by Hans Tammemagi of Oakhill Environmental, viz. "A waste crisis - two perspectives," in the Summer issue Vol. 15, No. 2 of the CNS Bulletin. The dichotomy portrayed between the disposal requirements of nuclear and municipal solid waste (MSW) clearly identifies a tremendous need for a radical culture shift in the management and regulation of MSW disposal practices. We have been actively involved in this field for a number of years and are acutely aware of the difficulty in trying to reach through particular mindsets to initiate such a cultural shift. We have an alternative solution to landfill which promises to help regulatory authorities set new and more stringent standards for disposal of such materials and provides a methodology for cleaning up the existing landfills with their potentially horrendous leaching problems. We have spent the last 15 years perfecting a waste disposal process for MSW, among many others, which converts the waste material into commercially usable by-products, a low to medium grade fuel gas and a non-leaching slag. Our technology, plasma gasification, is a non-incineration thermal process which uses extremely high temperatures to completely decompose input waste material, thereby providing substantially less contamination of all environments than either landfill or other state-of-the-art disposal technologies. Plasma gasification can achieve volume and weight reductions of 184:1 and 9:1 respectively with shredded MSW, a rate unimaginable with traditional methods of waste processing. Thus volume reduction would also increase substantially with as-received MSW. |
The plasma generators used by RCL provide for the complete gasification of all volatiles while non-combustibles are reduced to a molten glassy substance with a very tight matrix which solidifies into an inert, non-hazardous solid. Free carbon from the gasification process reacts with the moisture content, either inherent in the waste or added through steam injection, forming additional combustible gases. The resultant products, therefore, are a combustible gas and an inert slag. Unfortunately, for all of its promise, plasma gasification has been slow to enter the commercial or industrial mainstream as an economical and technically sound option for substantially reducing, if not entirely eliminating, the environmental problems caused by the more traditional disposal practices with MSW. Our main hurdle remains the low confidence / high risk perception inherent towards new technologies advancing into the marketplace. My primary aim through this letter is to stimulate an interest in your readership towards plasma gasification. If this technology could be brought to the forefront of solid waste processing methods by applying it to nuclear-related issues, such as the volume reduction of Low Level Radioactive Waste, the nuclear industry could offer not only a safety culture but also a demonstrated technology with which the MSW problems could be resolved. To this end, we would be most pleased to discuss this subject further with members of the CNS and provide tours of our operational facility in south Gloucester.
G.W. Carter |