Particle physics contribution to the elimination of nuclear waste

Progress in particle accelerator technology makes it possible to use a proton accelerator to eliminate nuclear waste efficiently. The Energy Amplifier (EA) proposed by C. Rubbia and his group is a subcritical system driven by a proton accelerator. It is particularly attractive for destroying, through fission, transuranic elements produced by present nuclear reactors. The EA could also transform efficiently and at minimal cost long-lived fission fragments using the concept of Adiabatic Resonance Crossing (ARC) recently tested at CERN with the TARC experiment. The ARC concept can be extended to several other application domains (radioactive isotopes production for medicine and industry, neutron research applications, etc.).