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We're currently learning about nuclear reactions and fission and fusion in my freshman general chemistry class and the book touched on the topic of nuclear waste from power plants using fission. I wondered to myself, why can't it just be launched into space? I mean I know it sounds like the thought of a five year old, but what's stopping countries from doing it? Is it just too expensive or dangerous? I imagine if something went wrong in the atmosphere it could cause some pretty serious contamination problems.

i assume its just too expensive to be worth it.

Someone obviously needs to watch more Futurama.

Lord-Loss wrote:Someone obviously needs to watch more Futurama.

I own all four seasons...are you referencing the giant trash ball I assume? haha well that wouldn't concern us now, those in the year 3000 can worry about it

I had a similar thought...
Shoot it into the sun. It might take a while but you won't have any problems with it so who cares how long it takes.
Then you have a lot of problems with fuel, cost etc...

Or if the rocket explodes in atmosphere...

Ahh yeah...
That would be a slightly massive problem...

Shooting Nuclear waste into space is a great idea...but not from my backyard....

we should worry about getting people back in to space before we worry about utilizing it.

starhawks wrote:We're currently learning about nuclear reactions and fission and fusion in my freshman general chemistry class and the book touched on the topic of nuclear waste from power plants using fission. I wondered to myself, why can't it just be launched into space? I mean I know it sounds like the thought of a five year old, but what's stopping countries from doing it? Is it just too expensive or dangerous? I imagine if something went wrong in the atmosphere it could cause some pretty serious contamination problems.

Imagine if the shuttle exploded or crashed, what a mess!! Anyway, launching stuff into space is hugely expensive, nuclear waste is heavy stuff, and space rockets typically need a huge amount of fuel to lift a tin can with a few men in it up into orbit let alone tons of nuclear waste. And I mean tons, thousands of tons of high level waste are produced worldwide every year.

I've written quite a few pieces on nuclear power and waste and the like, there's a lot of issues. But the waste that comes out of a standard plant is managable, once sealed up it is safe to handle. By which I mean people can transport it about and be close proximity to it in relative safety. They you just heap it up in sheds somewhere. But nuclear plants produce a fairly high volume of this waste, and furthermore you stand to run out of uranium in about 100 or whatever the estimate is.

So then you can consider "reprocessing". Which substantially cuts down your volume of waste and creates plutonium. This extends the useful lifetime of the original uranium many times. The reason this is not considered 'okay' is because it falls foul of nuclear proliferation act and it a major source for making nuclear weapons. This is why a lot of countries would be viewed with huge suspicion if they tried to go down this route even if it didn't violate nuclear proliferation, also there are big concerns about whether it is safe to even create plutonium due to the risk of terrorism (not that I think there has even been a recorded attempt by criminals to raid a nuclear plant), and there are environmental concerns too because you still have some very nasty by-products.

Perhaps shuttle launch from the back of a plane?

Less volatile at least.


I'm an idiot sometimes... (read most of the time)

If we could develop technology that would allow us to create Mass Drivers cheaply and en mass (pun unintended), then yes, I don't see why we couldn't simply blast it into space.

Radioactive railguns!

Howard A Treesong wrote:

starhawks wrote:We're currently learning about nuclear reactions and fission and fusion in my freshman general chemistry class and the book touched on the topic of nuclear waste from power plants using fission. I wondered to myself, why can't it just be launched into space? I mean I know it sounds like the thought of a five year old, but what's stopping countries from doing it? Is it just too expensive or dangerous? I imagine if something went wrong in the atmosphere it could cause some pretty serious contamination problems.

Imagine if the shuttle exploded or crashed, what a mess!! Anyway, launching stuff into space is hugely expensive, nuclear waste is heavy stuff, and space rockets typically need a huge amount of fuel to lift a tin can with a few men in it up into orbit let alone tons of nuclear waste. And I mean tons, thousands of tons of high level waste are produced worldwide every year.

I've written quite a few pieces on nuclear power and waste and the like, there's a lot of issues. But the waste that comes out of a standard plant is managable, once sealed up it is safe to handle. By which I mean people can transport it about and be close proximity to it in relative safety. They you just heap it up in sheds somewhere. But nuclear plants produce a fairly high volume of this waste, and furthermore you stand to run out of uranium in about 100 or whatever the estimate is.

So then you can consider "reprocessing". Which substantially cuts down your volume of waste and creates plutonium. This extends the useful lifetime of the original uranium many times. The reason this is not considered 'okay' is because it falls foul of nuclear proliferation act and it a major source for making nuclear weapons. This is why a lot of countries would be viewed with huge suspicion if they tried to go down this route even if it didn't violate nuclear proliferation, also there are big concerns about whether it is safe to even create plutonium due to the risk of terrorism (not that I think there has even been a recorded attempt by criminals to raid a nuclear plant), and there are environmental concerns too because you still have some very nasty by-products.

He's got it, american textbooks never discuss reprocessing or recycling the waste. Look at france 75% of their power is nuclear and they reprocess fuel all of their waste from the past 30 years is stored in one relatively small room at the hague

I say we got the StarTrek remake route. A giant elevator tethered to the space station. We send it up to space THAT way, and then just punt it into the suns direction. Presto change-o, no fuel wasted and no risk of rokkist going KABOOM! with a gak ton of nuclear waste in the atmosphere

We wouldn't send nuclear waste up for the same reason why we don't actually use nuclear powered rockets (this idea was explored by several agencies). If you have an accident, then you end up with the highly radioactive material being spread out through the atmosphere. It comes down and basically irradiates everything.

Even a small amount of radioactive material dispersed at an altitude near the boundary of our atmosphere would cause such massive devastation to the world's ecosystem that it would be a catastrophic global extinction level event.

Swordbreaker wrote:We wouldn't send nuclear waste up for the same reason why we don't actually use nuclear powered rockets (this idea was explored by several agencies). If you have an accident, then you end up with the highly radioactive material being spread out through the atmosphere. It comes down and basically irradiates everything.

Even a small amount of radioactive material dispersed at an altitude near the boundary of our atmosphere would cause such massive devastation to the world's ecosystem that it would be a catastrophic global extinction level event.

damn....now I know how to bring the world to it's knees

why we cannot send waste into space.

1. low level waste is volumous and quite impossible to ship up the gravity well in meaningful quantities.
2. High level waste is very dense and very toxic. It would be phenomenally expensive to launch.
3. During assembly the high level waste would need to be shielded adequately, at extra cost in mass.
4. high level unshielded waste is very nasty stuff, even if you shield reasonably well to prevent immediate danger, but not sufficient to prevent launch then the resultant contamination would mean you couldnt reuse the launch site let alone the launch vehicle.
5. If the rocket blows up you have the mother of all dirty bombs.
6. Finally a launch into space normally means into low orbit. Getting stuff out away from orbit and into a solar orbit, or fired at the sun itself rwquires a lot more fuel on launch. We can launch space station modules weighing many tons into LEO, a Mars probe or something else travelling away from the earth/moon will weight a few hundred kilos at most.
7. If you do not send the waste beyond LEO then it will inevitably drift down and renter atmosphere. whether radioactive waste burns up in the upper atmopshere or labnds as a lump, its still going to be very bad news.


How to deal with nuclear waste, a quick guide:

1. Germany: Seal it into multiple small heavy duty containers along with all attendant material, bury it a minimum of 300m down in a disused mine with heavy safety precautions.
2. UK: Bury it in a sealed heavy duty containers in a mineshaft. loe toxicity materials are buried in a landfil site with a few metres of loose earth over it (often as little as one).
3. Soviet Union: Seal it into cheaper containers and dump it off the coast of Sweden saying 'not our problem anymore'.

Or we could just send it into the earth's core! Then we only have to worry about that stuff comming back after a volcanic eruption.

Even Matty remembers the answer to this one from high school!

Short answer - getting rid of it isn't actually that big a deal.