Join us for the Physics Department Colloquium at 4:15 p.m.
Title: From Dinosaurs to Nuclear Waste—an adventure in physics
Abstract: My research in 1985 on the death of the dinosaurs led directly to my current work disposing of nuclear waste. After I retired from academic research, my daughter and I founded a company, Deep Isolation Inc, that offers an inexpensive method safely to disposal of high level nuclear waste. We drill a narrow borehole about a mile deep and then a mile horizontally.The waste is disposed in the horizontal section under a billion tons of rock. Detailed simulations show that the waste remains isolated from the biosphere for more than a million years, by which time most of the radioactivity has decayed. We currently have 50 employees and exploratory contracts in the US, UK, Finland, Japan, Estonia, Croatia, and several other countries. Life after retirement for a physicist can be interesting.
Location: 1 Physics North and Zoom
Speaker: Richard A. Muller, Professor of Physics (emeritus)
Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley