The Super X Divertor sounds like some fantasy invention from a 1950s Popular Mechanics. But it's a real device that helps enable two eco-friendly processes: Generating zero carbon-footprint power, and eating up dangerous nuclear waste from older power stations.

Physicists at the University of Texas have invented the Compact Fusion Neutron Source (CFNS), which is a clever system that mixes of two types of nuclear power reactors. The older fission reactor we're all familiar with (which generate lots of dangerously radioactive waste) and a tokamak fusion reactor (where small atoms are fused together much more cleanly).

The CFNS will eat up so-called nuclear "sludge," which is a dangerous, highly toxic, long-lived radioactive by-product of existing nuclear power stations. The sludge is formed into a jacket around the core fusion reactor. The CFNS spits out neutrons and heat which "burn" the sludge, releasing more energy as heat--which is used to generate more electricity--and reducing the sludge into less dangerous material. And the Super X Divertor makes it possible for the compound reactor to produce lots of neutrons and heat without destroying itself.

It's as if a new type of hybrid engine was invented for your car that caught the exhaust from your gas-powered engine and turned it into extra power and cleaner by-products.

Pure fusion reactors have long been the ultimate goal, since they release vast amounts of energy from small amounts of "fuel" and have very few dangerous by-products. But the Super X Divertor could act as a solution until the diffcult problems of building a fusion reactor are solved.

[via Physorg]