Role in Nuclear Waste
Neptunium-237 is the most mobile actinide in the deep geological repository environment. This makes it and its predecessors such as americium-241 candidates of interest for destruction by nuclear transmutation. Neptunium accumulates in commercial household ionization-chamber smoke detectors from decay of the (typically) 0.2 microgram of americium-241 initially present as a source of ionizing radiation. With a half-life of 432 years, the americium-241 in a smoke detector includes about 3% neptunium after 20 years, and about 15% after 100 years.
Due to its long half-life, neptunium becomes the major contributor of the total radiation in 10,000 years. As it is unclear what happens to the containment in that long time span, an extraction of the neptunium would minimize the contamination of the environment if the nuclear waste could be mobilized after several thousand years.
Read more about this topic: Neptunium
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