86 This immediately suggests two limitations: (1) Actual radioactive wastes are almost never composed of a pure radionuclide or even mixtures of pure radionuclides. There are usually very large numbers of non-radioactive (stable) atoms physically or chemically combined with the radioactive ones. In any nuclear bombardment of an actual specimen of radioactive wastes, there would always be a ‘question whether the desired effect upon the radioactive atoms would be negated by an undesired effect upon the stable atoms. (2) If neutrons from a nuclear reactor are chosen as the projectile for the nuclear bombardment, they can only be produced by burning (fissioning) nuclear fuel. There would always be a question whether the value of the desired effect from the bombardment would be negated by the significance of the new wastes generated in burning the fuel. One variation on the thought of "turning off" radioactive decay is to accelerate it so that the radioactive wastes need be stored a shorter time. This is theoretically possible for a number of the fission products which by simple neutron capture are converted to new radionuclides of shorter half-life. This approach has been proposed previously but has not been adopted becnuse of the Limitations noted above. As a final comment, there is a theoretical possibility that under the extreme conditions in a controlled thermonuclear (fusion) process, atoms could be troken down into their subatomic components. In a recent Nobel