Synthesis Of Precious Metals
The synthesis of precious metals, a symbolic goal long sought by alchemists, is only possible with methods utilizing nuclear physics, currently involving either nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. Since particle accelerators require huge amounts of energy while nuclear reactors produce energy, production methods using a nuclear reactor are considered more economically feasible. Often the goal of synthesis is to produce an element at a cost significantly less than the standard methods of production. Recovery of rare elements from spent fuel rods is also anticipated to help offset the cost of reprocessing.
Read more about Synthesis Of Precious Metals: Rhodium, Ruthenium, Palladium, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Osmium, Rhenium
Famous quotes containing the words synthesis of, synthesis, precious and/or metals:
“It is in this impossibility of attaining to a synthesis of the inner life and the outward that the inferiority of the biographer to the novelist lies. The biographer quite clearly sees Peel, say, seated on his bench while his opponents overwhelm him with perhaps undeserved censure. He sees him motionless, miserable, his head bent on his breast. He asks himself: “What is he thinking?” and he knows nothing.”
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967)
“It is not easy to construct by mere scientific synthesis a foolproof system which will lead our children in a desired direction and avoid an undesirable one. Obviously, good can come only from a continuing interplay between that which we, as students, are gradually learning and that which we believe in, as people.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)
“And here the precious dust is layd;
Whose purely temper’d Clay was made
So fine, that it the guest betray’d.
Else the soule grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sinne,
And so was hatch’d a Cherubin.”
—Thomas Carew (1589–1639)
“As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one’s soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)