ARCHIVED - Yecla company supplies graphene for Japanese nuclear power plant clean-up

The Fukushima plant was damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami

Graphenano, a company based in Yecla, is one of Spain’s major producers of graphene, a revolutionary product with extraordinary properties which include a strength to weight ratio which is 100 times greater than that of steel, making it stronger than diamonds, more flexible than rubber, with hugely efficient heat and electricity conductivity.

Scientists are not yet fully aware of the range of uses to which graphene might eventually be put, although its projected uses range from body armour, paint, car batteries and flexible screens which are capable of receiving digital content (imagine a digital newspaper that folds up yet has the same capacity as a computer screen to display digital content), but it is known that graphene oxide flakes can remove radioactive material from contaminated water, making them a powerful tool to clean up after nuclear accidents such as that suffered by the nuclear power plant of Fukushima, which suffered extensive damage in the earthquake of 11th March 2011.

Recently it has been announced that Graphenano, based in Yecla, Northern Murcia, is collaborate with the Tokyo Electric Company on a pilot project to use graphene flakes to clean up the radioactive water in and around the nuclear plant. Four years after the event there is still a high level of radioactivity in the area, but it has been found that among the unique properties of graphene is its ability to absorb and accumulate radioactivity. It is therefore planned to use trial the use of Graphene to clean up the water, where the Caesium 137 would normally remain harmful for 150 years.

According to Martín Martínez Rovira, the president of Graphenano, graphene is 60 times more efficient than any other procedure currently used in clean-up operations of this type, with each kilogram of the substance able to absorb 25 grams of radioactive isotopes. Nonetheless the task will take “years” to complete, with tons of graphene needed to deal with all the radiation present in the water of Fukushima.

At Graphenano the current production facilities can supply 35 kilograms per day, more than competitors abroad, and although supplies will initially be shipped to Japan on this basis production capacity may be increased in future. This contract guarantees the medium-term future of Graphenano, and makes Yecla one of the key locations in the campaign to repair the environmental damage done in Japan by the earthquake and tsunami of almost exactly four years ago.

Images: The destruction left behind in Japan followingthe quake and tsunami of 2011. Copyright Getty. Full or partial reproduction prohibited.