Why don't we simply send our nuclear waste to the sun for displosal?

Answer 1

for one thing -- it's too expensive and too dangerous right now to try to do so.. there are always dangers associated with the rocket launch, and if something goes wrong -- the entire planet will be subjected to radioactive waste spread across whole surface.. so until we have better technology and stop making mistakes we're stuck with keeping it down here..

Answer 2

For

If we dumped the entire supply of earths radioactive material into the sun it would make no appreciable difference to the sun. Once in space, sending a satellite into the sun is reasonably easy.
This part sounds good.

Against

The problem is launching.
~ It is expensive to launch anything.
~ There is too much radioactive material so lots of launches would be needed, this would take earths entire launch fleet and still need more.
~ The cost of launching the radioactive waste would make the power cost generated by it prohibitive.
~ An energy audit may show it takes more energy to launch the waste than was produced.
~ The safety factor is terrible. Any explosion of any launch rocket would cause world wide devastation.

In short .. it is a bad idea.

Answer 3

I have pondered this question plenty of times. It would be EXTREMELY risky getting the gunk off the ground first, and the trip through the atmosphere would be hairier.

I dont think anyone really knows what would happen if we actually had nuclear waste soaring at the sun. The reaction from the heat could produce a cataclysmic explosion that could alter the course of a planet or two and perhaps our own atmosphere.

Just pour the stuff down the drain with everything else!

Answer 4

There are several problems with this idea.

1) there is a large amount of nuclear waste to dispose of. The United States alone has over two million pounds of plutonium and that is just one form of nuclear waste and only with existing power plants. Bush is talking about building many more.

2) The expense would be astronomical, pun intended. In 2000 the lowest cost available to launch something into space was $7,500 per pound. Therefore it would cost about $14,000,000,000 to launch just the United State's plutonium into space.

3) It would take a lot of launches and launches are not very reliable so there would be not just one but several accidents in which large amounts of plutonium would be released into the atmosphere. That would be far worse than a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

These last two don't have much to do with launch nuclear waste into space but they do illustrate how bad the problem is.

4) Nuclear power is an inherently dangerous technology because it requires extensive and long-term handling of highly radioactive materials. That is bound to lead to accidents that can cause contamination that may last for centuries. Plutonium for instance has a half-life of 24,000 years. What that means is that if you start with 2,000,000 lbs of plutonium, after 24,000 years you will have 1,000,000 lbs left, the rest will turn into Uranium, which is also radio active but not as much. After yet another 24,000 years you will have 500,000 lbs of plutonium left. I think you can see where this is going. 2,000,000 lbs of plutonium will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years. Not good.

5) Plutonium is bad for another reason. It is far easier to make nuclear bombs from plutonium than it is from Uranium. Plutonium did not exist on earth before humans started messing with nuclear power. All of the plutonium that we now are stuck with, we made ourselves. Making even more is pretty stupid. That is another great reason not to use nuclear power.

6) One other thing about nuclear power. We will run out of it too. There is estimated to be only about a 300 year supply of Uranium on earth.

Answer 5

I took sometime pondering this one and I have concluded that obviously the technology we use currently is reliant on controlled explosions (rockets) to break earth's orbit and get into space. Subsequently, the entire process is entirely too complicated and dangerous to risk firing it into space with this older technology.

A solution to this would be to use a super conductor magnet assembled as a sort of cannon. Load the waste into containers that would have to be either positively or negatively charged and then line the rest of the cannon's barrel with electromagnets that will reverse their charge every split second, to first pull the waste toward it then in the next split second change the current and then repel it; this repeated millions of times would thus accelerate the projectile/waste to high speeds and fire it like a bullet out of the device.

The speed needed to break the gravitational pull would have to be incredibly fast but theoretically I think that it could be done. The cannon itself would have to be one of the largest structures ever built but could be done with little ingenuity and this would allow us to switch all of our power over to nuclear technology and reduce global warming and atmospheric pollution as nuclear energy is the cleanest method of generating energy, save we don't have any meltdowns.

Answer 6

Wrong, wrong & wrong.

Nuke waste can be reduced to a solid brick by removing all traces of liquid (water) and just concentrating the waste in a silica-based brick like one of the space shuttle's tiles. If a rocket were to blow-up the bricks would be inside a steel casing that would remain intact. Look at some of the debis from the 2 shuttles we lost... Stuff in protective casings survived without bursting.

So there's really not much risk of contamination, they just have to build containers to survive uncontrolled entry. It's not that hard.

The real reason is just that it would be expensive.

Getting it from here to ther in space is not so hard either, as long as your not in a hurry. If you did a sling-shot around the moon it could be sent to the sun without much for fuel than a moon shot.

Answer 7

Thats a good idea, because you figure the heat from the sun would burn it Not just nuclear, but dump site stuff, to help out the earth

Answer 8

practicality. it is simply too expensive to do so.

regarding stuart_ b's answer, i see a couple of flaws. otherwise i agree.

1. even if you remove the water from the waste, the water itself would be already contaminated (aka radioactive)....

2. if there were indeed protective casings, would they not put it in the cockpit as well? fact is, nothing from both shuttles (or any space launch vehicle) were intact. so if anything goes wrong (and it will), radioactive fallout results.

Answer 9

It's dangerous, as dealing with rockets is always a dicey undertaking. Also, the cost would be prohibitive. Forget it. If there was an accident. The results could be disasterous.

Answer 10

well first off we haven't developed a safe enough system of launching it out of the atmosphere and into a path to the sun. If a launch were to blow up... the results would be devestating.