Compton Radiation for Nuclear Waste Management and Transmutation

Compton inverse radiation is emitted in the process of backscattering of the laser pulses off the relativistic electrons. This radiation possesses high spectral density and high energy of photons—in hard x-ray up to gammaray energy range—with moderate electron energies (hundreds of MeV up to 1GeV) due to short wavelength of the laser radiation. The Compton radiation is well collimated: emitting within a narrow cone along the electron beam. A distinct property of the Compton inverse radiation is a steep high-energy cutoff of the spectrum and the maximal intensity just below the cutoff. The Compton sources can attain: spectral density up to 1014 gammas/(s 0.1%bandwidth) in MeV range of energies, and spectral brightness up to 1020 gammas/(smm2mr2 0.1%bw). Applicability of Compton sources for nuclear waste management and detection of radioisotopes and fissionable nuclides are discussed in the report. Also application limits of Compton gamma sources for transmutation of radioactive isotopes are estimated. A recently proposed subtracting method, in which two sets of data obtained by irradiating the object by the Compton beams with slightly different maximal energies are compared, will enhance resolution of detection radioactive elements at the ‘atomic’ (hundreds of keV) and the ‘nuclear’ (a few MeV) photon energies.