3 ms·
how much weight is it? with cheaper launch costs could we get it out of Earth orbit fo less?
by galangalalgol 7y ago
how much weight is it? with cheaper launch costs could we get it out of Earth orbit fo less?
- jabl 7y agoThe risk of a launch failure causing highly radioactive stuff to rain down on the surface of the earth is just WAY WAY bigger than the risk of some leak in a geological repository in 100k years (when practically all of the truly nasty stuff has long decayed away).
- acidburnNSA 7y ago90,000 metric tonnes in the US of high-level waste (incredibly low given that it's produced ~20% of our electricity carbon free for 40 years). You'd have to also launch a bunch of heavy shielding with that just for handling purposes, so be conservative and multiply by 10. You'd need a really reliable launch process like a space elevator to do this without worrying about dispersing it around in the atmosphere. It's worth talking about but it's hard to imagine a socially-acceptable pathway at the moment. Deep geologic repositories are safe and known. We should just use them.