The Isotopic Limit of Recycling

Eric Lang and Khalid Hattar ()
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Eric Lang: Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
Khalid Hattar: Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee–Knoxville, Knoxville, TN 37916, USA

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 21, 1-10

Abstract: Despite advances in recycling technologies and practices, the world still mostly operates on a once-through materials use cycle. The once-through approach to the materials supply chain cannot work into perpetuity. The vast majority of current recycling efforts focus on mechanical or chemical separation-based techniques and are often subsequently limited on the number of times a component can be recycled or upcycled. By looking at things from a particle physics and nuclear history perspective, we propose a thought experiment to determine the physical limit of recycling and propose subsequent limits and standards to evaluate all recycling efforts. This uncommon approach to analysis demonstrates that the current limits to recycling are not physical in nature but engineering.

Keywords: recycling; electromagnetic separation; landfill mining; isotopic separation; waste mining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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