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Will this ever be safe enough to use as a hazardous waste disposal system? Can we just send the worst of the worst into the sun without too much risk of just sp

by gataca 5y ago

Will this ever be safe enough to use as a hazardous waste disposal system? Can we just send the worst of the worst into the sun without too much risk of just spreading it out through the atmosphere in case of an explosion.

dylan604 5y ago
The launch of this material is probably safer than the transportation of that material to the loading/launch facility.
- vkou 5y ago
  It's not, the probability of a SpaceX rocket spectacularly exploding is somewhere around ~1%. They'd need 860 more problem-free launches to hit ~0.1%. The probability of a truck spectacularly exploding on its way to the launch facility is way less than 0.1%. In fact, it's astronomically lower than 0.1%.
  - inimino 5y ago
    You can't calculate probabilites that way when the process itself is improving.
  - jessriedel 5y ago
    > They'd need 860 more problem-free launches to hit ~0.1% For what it's worth, SpaceX claims that they intend to reach this level of safety by literally performing thousands of launches. Time will tell if they can do that.
bongoman37 5y ago
tacLog 5y ago
> Will this ever be safe enough to use as a hazardous waste disposal system? Can we just send the worst of the worst into the sun without too much risk of just spreading it out through the atmosphere in case of an explosion. I don't think it is impossible that launch capabilities become safe enough to lower the risk to something some people might consider acceptable. However the physics of it won't change. To even get into earths orbit we have to accelerate anything going up to an average of 7.8 Km/s, where to escape orbit to anywhere else it's 11.8 Km/s. I think the amount of energy to do that will always be the primary reason why this just isn't practical. Assuming you are advanced enough to be considering this, I would hope that your society is stable enough for long term containment and processing.
- iso1631 5y ago
  A space elevator could fling it out to escape velocity if you can build the containment vessel to survive a fall at terminal velocity (way lower than orbital velocity). Energy wouldn't be a problem for a civilization with the capability of building such an elevator, as there's plenty of solar, and raising 1 ton to GEO uses a trivial amount of energy.
jermaustin1 5y ago
Launching into the sun is a VERY difficult achievement. So far we've launched one solar probe, and dozens of other probes. It launched back in 2018, and still has 3.5 years before it will actually reach the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Going to the sun is easy, going there fast is hard. You could put a tiny ion thruster on it and get it there in a million years
- thfuran 5y ago
  We don't actually much care about when trash would hit the sun. But yes, it's a huge delta v compared to just getting to orbit.
  - skykooler 5y ago
    Adding a long duration deep space maneuvering system to allow the trash to precisely navigate the necessary gravity assists would also be far from feasibly economical.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  Yes, for reference the capability of the Delta IV Heavy [0] (which launched the Parker Solar probe) is ~28,000 kg in to LEO. And the Parker solar probe [1] was only 685 kg. I don't know how close to the limit of the mass this is to get in to this orbit, but it still gives you an idea of the capability to get something to the Sun versus in to LEO. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It is, indeed, way cheaper to fling it into space beyond the solar system with the right planetary alignment.
freudian123 5y ago
I did some back of the napkin math, USA generates about 2000 tons of nuclear waste a year[1] and it costs DOE half a billion dollars to store it[2]. Instead as you said we could yeet it all into space with like 20 starship launches, taking the $100/kg price tag it would cost us 2 million dollars to send it to space. Starship electronics should be radiation hardened so the unique payload shouldn't affect it much. The only risk is starship blowing up during launch. That would be a bummer. There's already a paper discussing this[3]. I love the last line in the paper 'Both the technology and the need exist. What does not yet exist is the will and support of the engineering and political communities' Mind you this came out in 1992, we have far better technology now. [1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source/#:~:text=All%20told%2C%20the%20nuclear%20reactors,in%20a%20pool%20on%20site https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-let.... [2]https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us#gs.pupgir https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us... [3]https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Manufacturing-conference-12-111-Disposal-Of-High-Level-Nuclear-Waste-In-Space.pdf https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Manufacturing...
- tacLog 5y ago
  Your math seems off, 1 ton is 1000kg, but your point still stands at $200 million plus the overhead of containment and transport to starship. This is far more economical that I expected. But also this is the price to orbit. As the escape velocity is 1.5x higher we can probably assume the same or a greater increase in cost. Maybe you could just justify a really high orbit? It would take a long time for it to build up.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    The main risk is taking off, you'd want something well protected and capable of surviving starship blowing up at any point during ascent, including returning safely to earth and impacting. You'd probably want to (unusually) launch over land - perhaps Alaska/Canada, to make retrieval easier should it fail before reaching orbit. Once it's in a low orbit, the extra shielding isn't needed as much as it's not going to fall back to earth quickly, so boosting from there to a high orbit would reduce the mass needed to be transported. In theory you could maybe do it for say $4b/yr all in. How many orbital solar collectors could you use to concentrate energy and beam the equivalent energy currently produced by nuclear plants to a desert based collector?
branko_d 5y ago
I know this is beside your point, but launching directly into the sun requires more energy than throwing outside our solar system altogether, as Scott Manley nicely explains here: https://youtu.be/i5XPFjqPLik https://youtu.be/i5XPFjqPLik
tastyfreeze 5y ago
Throwing all our radioactive waste into space seems like a shortsighted waste of a non-renewable resource. Once humans pull it out of the ground there isn't a natural process on Earth to create more.
- jessriedel 5y ago
  If it was put in a very high Earth orbit or solar orbit, it could be retrieved in the future, if desired.
dr_orpheus 5y ago
Spacecraft that use RTGs have to do quite a bit to ensure that the risk of the radioactive contamination is low. It is pretty expensive both technologically and to go through all the regulatory hurdles. So I think getting to a place where this is feasible is still a very long way off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Radioactive_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
Kye 5y ago
Waste is just a resource we don't know how to use yet. Someday we'd regret throwing all that fuel into the sun.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
Fun counter-intuitive space fact, it actually takes much less energy to send a space probe out of the solar system than it does to send one into the Sun. To fling something into the Sun you basically have to get rid of all the kinetic energy that was given to us from the Earth's orbit. Even stranger still is the fact that you have more efficiency if you send the probe into the outer solar system first and then try to slow down. The Ulysses probe did this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft) Edit: > "To fall into the sun a spacecraft would first have to escape the earth's gravity, and then after that slow down almost completely from the earth's orbital speed of about 30 km/s (~70,000 mph) around the sun. A four-stage, 3,000 ton rocket (about Saturn-V size) could only launch about 150 lbs into the sun on a direct trajectory, and it would probably cost a little more than $1 billion." > "To escape the solar system and fly off into interstellar space, a spacecraft only needs to speed up from earth's orbital velocity by about 40% (instead of reducing it by almost 100% to fall into the sun). The required delta-v would be about 17-18 km/s." From a simple HTML page with content written by a college professor, my favorite kind of webpage! https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=43694&t=launching-a-rocket-to-the-sun https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=43694&t=l...
- Melatonic 5y ago
  No no no - I think we are all missing the point here - if I learned anything from the Superman documentary series then we should be flinging the toxic waste at a trajectory that makes it go around the sun in REVERSE which will also mean it of course will travel backwards in time. And then for sure we can say that is going to end up as someone else's problem.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    If we send it back in time we can reverse the half-life too, think of the possibilities!
    - Melatonic 5y ago
      Half-Life 3 confirmed

by gataca 5y ago

dylan604 5y ago

The launch of this material is probably safer than the transportation of that material to the loading/launch facility.

vkou 5y ago
It's not, the probability of a SpaceX rocket spectacularly exploding is somewhere around ~1%. They'd need 860 more problem-free launches to hit ~0.1%. The probability of a truck spectacularly exploding on its way to the launch facility is way less than 0.1%. In fact, it's astronomically lower than 0.1%.
- inimino 5y ago
  You can't calculate probabilites that way when the process itself is improving.
- jessriedel 5y ago
  > They'd need 860 more problem-free launches to hit ~0.1% For what it's worth, SpaceX claims that they intend to reach this level of safety by literally performing thousands of launches. Time will tell if they can do that.

bongoman37 5y ago

tacLog 5y ago

> Will this ever be safe enough to use as a hazardous waste disposal system? Can we just send the worst of the worst into the sun without too much risk of just spreading it out through the atmosphere in case of an explosion. I don't think it is impossible that launch capabilities become safe enough to lower the risk to something some people might consider acceptable. However the physics of it won't change. To even get into earths orbit we have to accelerate anything going up to an average of 7.8 Km/s, where to escape orbit to anywhere else it's 11.8 Km/s. I think the amount of energy to do that will always be the primary reason why this just isn't practical. Assuming you are advanced enough to be considering this, I would hope that your society is stable enough for long term containment and processing.

iso1631 5y ago
A space elevator could fling it out to escape velocity if you can build the containment vessel to survive a fall at terminal velocity (way lower than orbital velocity). Energy wouldn't be a problem for a civilization with the capability of building such an elevator, as there's plenty of solar, and raising 1 ton to GEO uses a trivial amount of energy.

jermaustin1 5y ago

Launching into the sun is a VERY difficult achievement. So far we've launched one solar probe, and dozens of other probes. It launched back in 2018, and still has 3.5 years before it will actually reach the sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe

s1artibartfast 5y ago
Going to the sun is easy, going there fast is hard. You could put a tiny ion thruster on it and get it there in a million years
thfuran 5y ago
We don't actually much care about when trash would hit the sun. But yes, it's a huge delta v compared to just getting to orbit.
- skykooler 5y ago
  Adding a long duration deep space maneuvering system to allow the trash to precisely navigate the necessary gravity assists would also be far from feasibly economical.
dr_orpheus 5y ago
Yes, for reference the capability of the Delta IV Heavy [0] (which launched the Parker Solar probe) is ~28,000 kg in to LEO. And the Parker solar probe [1] was only 685 kg. I don't know how close to the limit of the mass this is to get in to this orbit, but it still gives you an idea of the capability to get something to the Sun versus in to LEO. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe
shadowgovt 5y ago
It is, indeed, way cheaper to fling it into space beyond the solar system with the right planetary alignment.

freudian123 5y ago

I did some back of the napkin math, USA generates about 2000 tons of nuclear waste a year[1] and it costs DOE half a billion dollars to store it[2]. Instead as you said we could yeet it all into space with like 20 starship launches, taking the $100/kg price tag it would cost us 2 million dollars to send it to space. Starship electronics should be radiation hardened so the unique payload shouldn't affect it much. The only risk is starship blowing up during launch. That would be a bummer. There's already a paper discussing this[3]. I love the last line in the paper 'Both the technology and the need exist. What does not yet exist is the will and support of the engineering and political communities' Mind you this came out in 1992, we have far better technology now. [1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source/#:~:text=All%20told%2C%20the%20nuclear%20reactors,in%20a%20pool%20on%20site https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-let.... [2]https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us#gs.pupgir https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us... [3]https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Manufacturing-conference-12-111-Disposal-Of-High-Level-Nuclear-Waste-In-Space.pdf https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Space-Manufacturing...

tacLog 5y ago
Your math seems off, 1 ton is 1000kg, but your point still stands at $200 million plus the overhead of containment and transport to starship. This is far more economical that I expected. But also this is the price to orbit. As the escape velocity is 1.5x higher we can probably assume the same or a greater increase in cost. Maybe you could just justify a really high orbit? It would take a long time for it to build up.
- iso1631 5y ago
  The main risk is taking off, you'd want something well protected and capable of surviving starship blowing up at any point during ascent, including returning safely to earth and impacting. You'd probably want to (unusually) launch over land - perhaps Alaska/Canada, to make retrieval easier should it fail before reaching orbit. Once it's in a low orbit, the extra shielding isn't needed as much as it's not going to fall back to earth quickly, so boosting from there to a high orbit would reduce the mass needed to be transported. In theory you could maybe do it for say $4b/yr all in. How many orbital solar collectors could you use to concentrate energy and beam the equivalent energy currently produced by nuclear plants to a desert based collector?

branko_d 5y ago

I know this is beside your point, but launching directly into the sun requires more energy than throwing outside our solar system altogether, as Scott Manley nicely explains here: https://youtu.be/i5XPFjqPLik https://youtu.be/i5XPFjqPLik

tastyfreeze 5y ago

Throwing all our radioactive waste into space seems like a shortsighted waste of a non-renewable resource. Once humans pull it out of the ground there isn't a natural process on Earth to create more.

jessriedel 5y ago
If it was put in a very high Earth orbit or solar orbit, it could be retrieved in the future, if desired.

dr_orpheus 5y ago

Spacecraft that use RTGs have to do quite a bit to ensure that the risk of the radioactive contamination is low. It is pretty expensive both technologically and to go through all the regulatory hurdles. So I think getting to a place where this is feasible is still a very long way off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Radioactive_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

Kye 5y ago

Waste is just a resource we don't know how to use yet. Someday we'd regret throwing all that fuel into the sun.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

Fun counter-intuitive space fact, it actually takes much less energy to send a space probe out of the solar system than it does to send one into the Sun. To fling something into the Sun you basically have to get rid of all the kinetic energy that was given to us from the Earth's orbit. Even stranger still is the fact that you have more efficiency if you send the probe into the outer solar system first and then try to slow down. The Ulysses probe did this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft) Edit: > "To fall into the sun a spacecraft would first have to escape the earth's gravity, and then after that slow down almost completely from the earth's orbital speed of about 30 km/s (~70,000 mph) around the sun. A four-stage, 3,000 ton rocket (about Saturn-V size) could only launch about 150 lbs into the sun on a direct trajectory, and it would probably cost a little more than $1 billion." > "To escape the solar system and fly off into interstellar space, a spacecraft only needs to speed up from earth's orbital velocity by about 40% (instead of reducing it by almost 100% to fall into the sun). The required delta-v would be about 17-18 km/s." From a simple HTML page with content written by a college professor, my favorite kind of webpage! https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=43694&t=launching-a-rocket-to-the-sun https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=43694&t=l...

Melatonic 5y ago
No no no - I think we are all missing the point here - if I learned anything from the Superman documentary series then we should be flinging the toxic waste at a trajectory that makes it go around the sun in REVERSE which will also mean it of course will travel backwards in time. And then for sure we can say that is going to end up as someone else's problem.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  If we send it back in time we can reverse the half-life too, think of the possibilities!
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Half-Life 3 confirmed