Why can't we send our nuclear waste to the sun

Why can't we send our nuclear waste to the sun, bomb it with protons/neutrons/alpha-particles or put it in a tomahawk full of plasma?

Well, there is the undeniable risk of launch pad explosion or other launch failure, and it only has to happen once.

Well, there is the undeniable risk of launch pad explosion or other launch failure, and it only has to happen once.

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Put it into explosive resistent boxes (they do exist)

What about the other possibilities?

Why can't we send our nuclear waste to the sun?

Too expensive.

I think because of cost and security, it cost a lots per kilo to send something in orbit, and when you talk about nuclear wast, it mean lots of shielding. Lead is use as shield and weight a lots.

there is also the risk of an exlposion, dont forget, all those launcher are literaly super controled bomb. One little problem and kaboum, nuclear wast rain on our head.

Plasma is far away from beeing hot enough to dismanttle heavy atomic nuclei.

If i had the solution, i wouldnt post it here, and i would be rich pretty soon.

Those boxes would not merely need to be able to survive a launchedpad explosion, but also rocket failure well after take-over, sending it falling thru the atmosphere in an uncontrol trajectory ending with slamming into the surface with very high velocity. That's a pretty tall order.

Originally posted by Ultraworld

Put it into explosive resistent boxes (they do exist)

What about the other possibilities?

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Expensive resistant boxes would be very heavy, so you won't get much out of it. Millions of tons of radioactive waste would cost great many of those little green things to shoot into the Sun.

But maybe you have a sollution to that.


Edit: If I understand correctly, radioactive material emmits alpha particles, so what's the use of bombing it with that stuff?

Current practicality aside, it will probably be done someday.

If we still have nuclear waste, which we may not.

Practicality comes to mind, but we can just bury it in the Nevada (I think . . . ) Mountains and forget about it. Or we can just skirt the issue by not being dependant on Nuclear Power, and not building Nuclear Weapons . . .

Someone has been watching some bad Superman movies...

i think using shuttles would be too expensive and dangerous for such a venture.

but put that stuff in lead balls, and shoot it from a rail gun type thing, and there you go. no falling back down, no explosions.

the BIG difference between sending people/ships into space and sending waste to the sun is that the waste does NOT need to STOP, ever (well atleast in any way other then crashing into the sun).

its amazing how many people think that the ONLY way to get out of earth's gravitational pull is by sitting on a rocket.

if you dont know what a rail gun is, immagine a big rollercoaster, with the end pointing at the sky. the "cart" is accelerated like crazy and then gets let go off the end pointing to the sky. it flies all the way out of the earth's gravity field, and (if aimed right, into the sun).

Is the question why aren't we daily launching nuclear missiles into orbit?

Seriously though, here's some interesting work being done in Europe on the elimination of nuclear waste.

http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/8/8


Hopefully if this gets perfected then we in the US can finally lose our nuclear power paranoia.

RoddyVR:

That's a good idea. Has anything like this been built or are there any plans that you know of?

Bobo the Ape:

Good article. I hope that they can get this idea to work. Then we can hopefully reduce our fossil fuel dependance.

RoddyVR: That railgun of yours isn't going to be immune to mechanical failure either.

'Nother question is why one'd specifically want to send it into the Sun. Dumping it on the Moon would be noticeably cheaper, and the locals aren't going to complain.

there is also the fact that the surface of the sun is in excess of over 6000 degrees centigrade, any rocket launched would probably melt as it approached the sun, or if it did get there, the waste could quite possibly upset the reactions going on inside the sun and end up in it being destroyed.

What are the drawbacks of storing the waste far underground in lead vaults?

the fact that there is so much of the stuff, and most of it will be there for thousands of years, i think the half life of one of the uranium isotopes is about 4.5 billion years.

the waste could quite possibly upset the reactions going on inside the sun and end up in it being destroyed.

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ummm......I don't think you have a true appreciation of the size and power of the sun. Or the amount of radioactivity in outer space.

If we could somehow drive the entire earth into the sun it wouldn't "destroy" the sun.

the advantages of sending nuclear waste to the sun:
1. only NATURAL way of destorying the waste quickly
2. it wont affect the sun at all, its hot enough to break the stuff down to neutrons and so on (instead of big atoms)
3. its better then poluting whatever rock we otherwise leave it on (be it earth, moon, or some asteroid) cause the rock can be used for other stuff


reasons shuttles/rockets will never be used for it:
1. too expensive. them rockets, and their fuel can be quite pricy
2. too dangerous. strapping nuclear waste to the front of what is essentialy a big pipebomb is not a prety concept.
3. very wastefull. the ships (as they are now) are equiped/designed to COME BACK to earth for the most part, or atleast do something usefull (like turn/slowdown) in space.

why i think a rail gun is much more likely.
1. cheaper. while the initial investment is prety hefty to build it (the limiting factor so far), the cost of use is actualy prety minimal compared to anything else.
2. safer. there is no explosions (controled or otherwise). if you picture it as a big circle rail (probably on a magnet field istead of metal rails) that is used to speed the thing up to speed and then launched off the circle via a "branch" of the rail, then there's a failsafe (just let it slow down going in a circle if you wanna abort) that's safer then the aborted countdowns of a shuttle (stop an explosion once it started as i understand it).
3. not as error prone. some prety big tragectory problems can be ignored cause the sun will pull in most anything not in a good orbit around it (which this cant be unless its launched the wrong way, like away from the sun)
4. the rail gun launch thing, if built big enough, can be used to launch other stuff into orbit, by changing the launch tragectory and speed a little. so satelites (weather around the earth or sun) can be launched without the expence of massive rockets.

I have a very hard time imagining what difference a few million or billions of tons of nuclear waste could do something the size of the sun. Especially since it already contains considerable amounts of the elements in question - some 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of uranium, for instance.