A Way To Rid The Earth Of Nuclear Waste!

Never thought that if a terrorist took one out at launch it would be catastophic!

BUT i did say that it would be launched in a remote location!

If you read my post from earlier in this thread you will see that rockets blow up by themselves QUITE FREQUENTLY. I would say no terrorist involvement needed.

Also, remote location of the launch does not matter, if you read my earlier post you see that MANY of them blow up in flight, several miles up. Talk about an unintentional "dirty bomb". A few tons of radioactive waste blown up several miles in the air, I imagine the radioactive fallout would be fairly widespread.

Lets make the scenario worse.

Imagine that if during the "orbital slingshot" needed to propel the waste towards the sun the capsule inadvertantly reenters the atmosphere( we know those engineers never make miscalculations )

If you remember the recent shuttle accident wreckage was strewn over a LARGE area. Now imagine if instead of the shuttle it was several tons of waste. You've now contaminated numerous states with highly radioactive waste.

[edit on 12/5/05 by Skibum]

But these are all what if's!!!


What if Osama Bin Laden set off 20 nukes in large cities around the world!

What if some mad scientist creates a black whole in his lab and it sucks the Earth into it?

What if the next shuttle flight goes off course, blows up and lands on the white house lawn???

A million things everyday could happen that would be catastophic, a rocket with nuclear waste onboard could explode but would be worth the risk if it was to stop the western world being full of waste for the next 100,000 years!

Originally posted by MickeyDee
But these are all what if's!!!


What if Osama Bin Laden set off 20 nukes in large cities around the world!

What if some mad scientist creates a black whole in his lab and it sucks the Earth into it?

What if the next shuttle flight goes off course, blows up and lands on the white house lawn???

A million things everyday could happen that would be catastophic, a rocket with nuclear waste onboard could explode but would be worth the risk if it was to stop the western world being full of waste for the next 100,000 years!

Your what ifs are highly unlikely to happen, with the history of launching rockets the number of failures makes mine a much higher chance of happening. I say its safer to keep it in a contained environment, than to take the fairly high risk of contaminating a large area.


Lets break your propsal down in real terms and see how well it works.


In 2003 the U.S. alone had about 50,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from reactors.

Whats the weight limit for a rocket? 5 maybe 10 tons. Heck I'll even say 20 just to be on the safe side.

That 2500 rocket launches to remove the waste of the U.S. alone.

Lets look at the past history of the Ariane rocket launches, to be fair lets say that 1 out of 100 rockets blows up in flight( in reality its much higher more like 4 out of 100).

Out of those 2500 launches to rid the U.S. of its existing waste as of 2003
there would be an extremely high probability of at least 25 of those rockets blowing up in flight. Thats 500 tons of radioactive waste dispersed into our environment.

Its not a question of "rocket with nuclear waste onboard could explode"
It WILL happen, there is nothing that can be done about it.

In order to accomplish your proposal worldwide there would probably be at least 100 blown up rockets carrying nuclear waste.


Any Questions?

Then we must wait till the future, when spacecraft have an excellent safety record and can carry payloads in excess of 200-300 tons!!!

Originally posted by MickeyDee
Then we must wait till the future, when spacecraft have an excellent safety record and can carry payloads in excess of 200-300 tons!!!

i suppose you've heard of that Space Elevator
which is in the first stages of development, right now
they're doing the nano-tech thing making real long & tough
high-carbon strands....

Google up .... or whatever

in the mean time
they are getting rid of some of the radioactive waste
it's identified a Depleated-Uranium
and its all over Iraq & Afghanistan and used in
our bunker-buster missles & bombs along with other
projectiles, etc

suppose you've heard of that Space Elevator
which is in the first stages of development, right now
they're doing the nano-tech thing making real long & tough
high-carbon strands....

very true!!!

Thanks for that as i was starting to run out of steam with the whole exploding rocket thing!

Suppose once the elevator is perfected we wont have to worry about rockets spreading waste all over!

Mic

Whats the weight limit for a rocket? 5 maybe 10 tons.

Time to unretire the Saturn V.

Originally posted by Frosty

Whats the weight limit for a rocket? 5 maybe 10 tons.

Time to unretire the Saturn V.

It would still take a few thousand launches to send the worlds nuclear waste to the sun.

It would still take a few thousand launches to send the worlds nuclear waste to the sun.

Maybe???

But how much weight will the space elevator program be able to lift???

Originally posted by MickeyDee

It would still take a few thousand launches to send the worlds nuclear waste to the sun.

Maybe???

But how much weight will the space elevator program be able to lift???

Don't now about how much a space elevator would be able to lift. I was referring to even using the saturn v rockets.

It still looks like a space elevator could be quite a ways off, from what I have read there are many things that need to be figured out before it will be able to be built. Its a great idea though and I hope to see it come together in my lifetime, but I wont hold my breath.

By the time its built though I would image the will have been breakthrough in how we handle waste on earth, I've seen a few ideas out there but am not very familiar with them. I guess it will all depends on which process comes together first , be it elevator or a new refining process or whatever that will determine how we handle the waste in the future.
But until then I feel the best thing to do with the waste would be to store it in dedicated places like Yucca.

Even with a space elevator I am kind of leary about sending the waste to the sun, maybe store it on the moon or something. There may be a day where we figure out how to do fantastic things with the spent fuel but can't since it's all been destroyed. I would imagine there isn't an unlimited quantity of Uranium on the planet.

i am having trouble with all search engines but that space elevator thing how would we buid something that size in to space i do remember hearing about an astroid but that may be from another thred

Originally posted by this is yellow 13
i am having trouble with all search engines but that space elevator thing how would we buid something that size in to space i do remember hearing about an astroid but that may be from another thred

Read this, I found it quite informative.


en.wikipedia.org...


[edit on 13/5/05 by Skibum]

What if the US/UK found a way to get rid of the nuclear waste by dropping it on millions of innocent men, woman and children???

OH we already are in Iraq!

I would imagine there isn't an unlimited quantity of Uranium on the planet.

Good!

The sooner its gone the sooner we stop building nuclear power plants all over the world and start using more efficient re-usable power sources!

And less uranium means that one day nukes will.......well just stop being produced!