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Now that launching stuff into orbit is getting much cheaper, is there any reasonable calculation to just ship nuclear waste into orbit? Or even further away (cr
by ssijak 6y ago
Now that launching stuff into orbit is getting much cheaper, is there any reasonable calculation to just ship nuclear waste into orbit? Or even further away (crashing it into Sun would be ideal but too expensive I guess)
- einpoklum 6y agoNIMBY on steroids: Not on my back-yard planet :-) Luckily for you there aren't other sentients in the Sol system.
- chihuahua 6y agoSome rocket launches fail, and it would be a problem if you're constantly launching radioactive waste into space and 1% of those launches end with a crash that scatters dangerous material on the ground.
- cozzyd 6y agoThere goes the carbon benefits...
- thinkcontext 6y agoThe US produces 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste per year. There's also about 90,000 metric tons in storage. Falcon Heavy is the most cost effective rocket in operation. For $90M it can send 8 tons to GTO (its harder to get things into the sun but the numbers are available for GTO). So just the launching would cost would be $22.5B per year. And it would be $1T to take care of the existing waste. But that's way too low because transporting the waste and preparing it for launch would be very expensive in itself.