kamikaze spaceship to carry nuclear waste to sun....?

Question

So, to all you NASA-types in-the-know out there, here's a question for you - my husband and I got into an argument tonight about why they don't just send nuclear waste (which is, he argues, very expensive to hold here on Earth), on a suicidal spaceship into the sun? I responded with my general "Well, if they could do that, they would have by now" routine (too much faith in humanity, I know) but I theorized that the COST of a sort of "kamikaze" spaceship required to carry a load of nuclear waste to the sun would outweigh the expense of housing the waste here on Earth. Are we both way off here? Are there environmental concerns, or other reasons we haven't considered, that we don't just ship our dangerous garbage up to be consumed by the sun's constant explosions? What are we missing? Prove us both equally wrong and you may save a marriage... ;-)

Answer 1

Look at the space shuttle program, it is funded at the near trillion dollar level. And that is for an orbiter that we re-use. Imagine the cost to build something to go to the sun that would not be coming back? Also, transporting the waste into the ship would be difficult.

If you go directly from the ground, you need a BIG ship. What happens if that ship suffers a launch failure: You spread waste across the world.

If you shuttle the waste to a ship in orbit, you have the same problem, if 0.05% of missions fail and you need 1,000 missions, do the math.

The cost of something like this and the risks are so high that it is much safer and cheaper to put this stuff in the ground (where it came from) in secure containers and allow it progress in its half life decomposition.

I think the risk of main/booster engine explosion in either an orbiter or a lift rocket is so high that you would have a serious risk that could literally create a dirty bomb effect with one load that would be hundreds of times greater than anything terrorists could do.

The main issues with long term storage are total volume of material, storage containers, and potential leakage of material into ground water. Radiation in and of itself is a hazard easily diminished by distance and shielding, but show me a large structure built by the lowest bidder that soes not eventually leak...

Answer 2

Oh, i have had the same sentiment. That would be lovely! While we are at it, why not get rid of all the nuclear weapons!!!! (sigh)

Unfortunately, it's too dangerous. For example: not all shuttles complete the trip outside of our earth's envelope. When we have failures, they are not only devastating because of the human deaths, but also because each mission has been planned for specific projects, and years of research abruptly end at a failed launch. These consequences would be significantly more destructive if they included massive amounts of nuclear waste.

I think you are right. I think that we could improve our technology enough to send all nuclear waste on a magic carpet ride to the sun. However, why would a government spend that kind of money? The research and hardware costs would be significant. In the long run it might save money...the Earth...etc. But politicians only have 2-8 years in office. This sort of clean-up project would take longer than that, so there is no incentive.

If there was a large scale popular belief that voters wanted to clean nuclear waste from the earth, then it could happen. But keep in mind, our current president doesn't even believe in the greenhouse effect.

Hopefully I am wrong. It might be important to note that I am neither a politician or a scientist.

Answer 3

Everyone is on the right track, but they are not thinking the issue through all the way through.

1) It costs a ton of money to send anything into orbit, let alone send it into the Sun. The last figure I heard was about 10,000 dollars per pound, just to get something into orbit. If you want to send it into the Sun, I would imagine the cost rising to about 100,000 dollars per pound.

2) Rocket launches are not flawless. Engineers go through great lengths to prevent accidents, but every now and then, something goes wrong and the whole she-bang blows up in the sky. This is bad news if you are hauling several tons of radioactive waste, since it sprinkles the stuff everywhere like a fine dust. Then everyone within 100 miles comes down with radiation poisoning and lung cancer.

3) There are plenty of perfectly good places to dump nuclear waste here on Earth. For example, the bottom of a mountain is a perfectly safe place, and costs about 1-millionth the price. The only real worry, then, is making sure you don't accidently dump the stuff where it can seep into underground water tables. Any capable geologist, however, can tell you if there is any liklihood of this at a given location. There is also the issue of transportation, since you don't want the trucks hauling the stuff to get into accidents and dump the waste in urban areas. This, however, is easy to get around. All you need to do is engineer a handy-dandy storage tank that won't break after going through a mere car wreak (which has already been done).

In short, it's just way easier to dump nuclear waste locally. A lot of folks get kind of scared when they think about the evil "nuclear waste," but really, it's just not that nasty if you take a few precautions and use common sense.

Answer 4

Besides the risk of failure, the correct answer is that currently no vehicle has been built that could make the trip to the sun.

It would be a great idea if it were possible. There are no environmental reasons why this would not work. In fact it would ultimately be the best environmental solution. In that sense your husband is right!

In fact, sending a ship into the sun would take a tremendous amount of fuel. Many, many more times the amount of fuel it takes to leave the solar system. By nature, a spaceship, once it leaves earth's orbit, will want to orbit the sun in approximately the same orbit as the Earth. In order for it to "fall" out of orbit, we would need to slow a vehicle to a speed of zero relative to the sun, but as it leaves Earth's orbit it would be moving at more than 107,000 km/hr (66,000 mph) relative to the sun.

So far only one space vehicle has travelled to Mercury. Reaching the sun is much harder! In that sense you are right!

Answer 5

I think that you're closer to being correct. Take into account the millions of dollars it would cost just to design the ship and for design analysis, plus the amount to fabricate the parts/tools needed to build the ship, the labor associated with building the ship.. and of course, all the in-depth testing and analysis, the various contracting...This easily would reach into the billions in costs for a ship that isn't reusable. Also include the cost of rockets and fuel.

The only real risks I could see is a malfunction in space or explosion on take-off. Then there is the result of hurdling thousands of tons of nuclear material into the sun. Earth is largely affected by the Sun's magnetic fields, so could potential nuclear explosions cause any ill effects on us? I don't know enough to speculate there, but I'll bet NASA does. Who knows. Interesting argument.

Answer 6

Since you've already gotten some fine answers, I can't add anything other than another idea that has been tossed around for a number of years. Dump nuclear waste material in secure containers in subduction zones. These are areas of the Earth, usually under the oceans, where continental plates collide. One plate moves (..subducts) beneath the other and is subsequently buried deep within Earth's mantle for hundreds of millions of years. The idea is that the nuclear waste would thus be ground up and buried for ages as a dispersed deposit.

Just some food for thought :)

Answer 7

It is a good idea in theory. The sun doesn't really care about nuclear waste since it is essentially a huge H-bomb consuming four tons of hydrogen every second and spewing out all kinds of ionizing radiation.

But the cost to launch it into space and the risk of failiure outweight any benifits.

The Russians have lauched nuclear powered satelites into orbit (RORSAT) and one of them crashed in northern Canada in the 1970s, causing radioactive contamination; proof of the risks.

Answer 8

well the cost to send one man into space according to the russians is 20 million. and the expense would be great. first you have to build the rocket and then you have to load the waste and then you have to give it enough power to get out of orbit. im thinking the cost is what is really keeping us from doing that. because most likely its cheaper to store it underground than to load it up in special containers that can withstand the gforces of take off.

but ther could also be some worries about what would leftover uranium and such do to the sun. im thinking heat wouldnt do much to the actual radioactive particles but would they be swept back to earth as the sun is always blowing heat and such out from a core.

very interesting question if you really get down to astrophysics and economics of the stuff.

Answer 9

A previous respondant got it - an accident on the launch pad, or before it got out of the atmosphere would be catastrophic.

Cripes, don't break up over that. You are probably both right. It would be a great idea if it was cheap enough and perfectly safe.

Answer 10

It's a good idea, it wouldnt have to be a suicide mission. It can be all automated but it'd probably be more expensive to build a ship to carry it to the sun unless they put all the waste into a missile shell, shoot it into the sun and reuse the same ship over and over.