4 ms·

How much nuclear waste is produced annually? Can reasonable number of Starships take it to the space?

• Sebb767 5y ago
  The problem is not the weight, but the dangers of launching. Space rockets have a comparatively bad crash record and one full with nuclear fuel breaking down in the atmosphere would wreck havoc on anything nearby (as in countries). Storing it on earth is much easier and safer.
• Retric 5y ago
  High level waste is a serious issue in case of an accident, low-level radioactive waste is regularly disposed of already. https://www.nrc.gov/waste/llw-disposal/licensing/locations.html https://www.nrc.gov/waste/llw-disposal/licensing/locations.h...
• tux3 5y ago
  I think the standard answer to this is you really don't want to take the chance of a rocket loaded with nuclear waste crashing back down or catching fire in midair. People can accept the occasional plane debris crashing on their house. Less so with radioactive waste.
• himinlomax 5y ago
  Launching it is idiotic. If you want to put it away, you could just drill a deep bore hole 2 km down. At that depth, it won't interact with anything and won't come back up except at geological time scale (millions of years). It would be very expensive, but less so than launching it.
• q1w2 5y ago
  The spent-fuel waste is roughly one barrel per reactor per year - not a lot and easily managed. There is a lot of very-low risk waste (ie of the same radioactivity as bananas) which really doesn't not need to be treated like life threatening material as it is today - and is much more voluminous. The amount of that stuff depends on what the local regulations are making plants dispose of (eg some places force plant employees to throw out their uniforms every week).