Nuclear Energy? Safe or No Way!

[Kayra]

Of course, we could always just launch it into the Sun. Not going to bother anyone there.

 

I'm actually only half joking. What is the lifetime cost of storing spent nuclear fuel for 50,000 years or whatever, vs the cost of launching into a position where it will take a nice tumble into the solar systems ultimate incinerator? Even given that we need to develop the launch system to do so?

 

TFS

 

US alone generates 3,000 tons a year of the stuff, and has a stockpile of 60,000 tons

 

I wonder how much the rest of the world produces.

 

I would also bet that there would be a LOT of resistance to putting nuclear waste on a space shuttle :eek_big:

 

Now, it would be the PERFECT sollution if we had a space elevator in place. (go go Graphene).

 

Hoist it up, give it s cheap disposable engine (perhaps one that will run on nuclear waste :shrug: ) and point it in the right direction.

[P-man]

I must say, I cna't wait for fusion reactors either but NUCLEAR IS THE WAY TO GO!

[Pyrotex]

Of course, we could always just launch it into the Sun. Not going to bother anyone there....

I know that sounds like a good idea, but it is far more difficult to do than you might imagine.

 

To get a rocket to fall into the Sun, you have to negate its orbital velocity around the Sun. At least, you must negate enough so that the resulting ellipse will intersect the outer atmosphere of the Sun. But at the orbit of the Earth where we are, you would have to negate 95% or more of the orbital velocity -- OR, you would just have the rocket go into a tight cometary ellipse that would zoom close around the Sun, and several months later would return to the vicinity of the Earth's orbit !!!!!! :eek2: :shrug: :)

 

The idea of dumping radioactive waste into the Sun has been investigated before. No matter what the cargo, an intercept with the Sun is one of the most difficult trajectories you can do! That is, it takes a ridiculous amount of fuel. It would be easier to shoot the stuff out of the Solar System entirely.

[Kayra]

I know that sounds like a good idea, but it is far more difficult to do than you might imagine.

 

It would be easier to shoot the stuff out of the Solar System entirely.

 

<Ponder>

 

It never even occured to me Pyro, but makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Well, you could always crash into Venus, or Jupiter, or just shoot it out into space and put it a LaGrange orbit and just leave it there.

 

It's kind of a flight of fancy anyway - the cheapest you can get to GTO is around $7000 / lb. Tally that up with the 11,000 tons or so of the really nasty stuff you have to dispose of every year, and you end up with a total launch cost of $154 Billion Dollars. Not to mention the danger of rockets full of nuclear waste exploding over Los Angeles.

 

You'd need to get your launch cost down to the $1,000 a pound range (for GTO!) (now we're talking 22 million dollars. Chump Change for the Feds. Even if no one else chips in.)

 

Then it becomes feasible to at least store it somewhere a little less nasty. (Earth/Sun L2? Mecury? In orbit around Venus. Somewhere else we don't want to go particularly.)

 

Still, expensive, and $1,000/lb to GTO is a LONG way off.

 

Oh well, I can dream of radioactive space litter can't I?

 

TFS

[Kayra]

Like I said, we need graphene :shrug:

 

$60.00 / Lb to GSO .

[Boerseun]

Throw the waste in a drum. Cast the drum in concrete, say, the same thickness as the drum's width. Park a few thousand of them drums on a containership, and sail to the Marianas trench. Dump all of it into the 11,000m deep trench, never to be heard or seen of again. Water from the deep sea floor have been calculated to circulate into the top layers once in about a thousand years - much longer for the trenches. Besides - within less than a thousand years, the incessant raining of muck from the top layers would have already started burying the concrete barrels in a few feet of slime, which would eventually solidify, forming rock. Eventually, the whole lot of it would disappear under the continental shelves, and get churned into the upper mantle, by which time the human race have either killed itself, changed into a different species, realised that it's simply not worth the bother, or have been destroyed in some totally unrelated arbitrary fashion.

 

It's cheap, it's permanent, it's gone. Terrorists looking for spent nuclear fuel won't be able to dive 11 kilometers deep without drawing some attention.

 

If the seafloor grinds under the continental plates at the rate of a few cm's per year, and you dump the stuff right there at the border zone, it should be gone very quickly (relatively speaking, of course - couple 'o thousand years). Of course it will be spewed out again after a while, ejected through a volcano, but that's where the crap came from in the first place. And having been melted down, it would've been so diluted as not to matter, anyway. Besides - that'll be millions of years into the future, and should've radiated whatever radiation it had left in any case.

 

Let a thousand reactors bloom!

[Racoon]

Spaceshipping it into the sun? What happens if the shuttle blows up, a la Columbia?? There would have to be many shuttles used, and the possibility of just one going wrong...

Marianna trench? possibly. what about earthquakes that might rip the drums open? or the techtonic plates hitting the drums at angles and busting them open?

There would be quite a few drums...

 

;) :shrug:

[Kayra]

Spaceshipping it into the sun? What happens if the shuttle blows up, a la Columbia?? There would have to be many shuttles used, and the possibility of just one going wrong...

Marianna trench? possibly. what about earthquakes that might rip the drums open? or the techtonic plates hitting the drums at angles and busting them open?

There would be quite a few drums...

 

;) :shrug:

 

One thing that might be an issue. All of that waste will produce a S*** load of heat. Warm water will rise. if any of the containers are fractured then warm contaminated water will rise.

 

 

Graphene = Space elevator

Space elevator = cheap safe GSO (VERY cheap)

 

1) Lift waste to GSO

2) Net all material together.

3) Attach 1 radioactive waste powered ion engine.

4) Point away from solar system and turn on engine.

 

Total cost = Cost to GSO + 1 engine / year

 

 

Still need that damned graphene :)

[Racoon]

We need the Graphene like you said Kayra. ;) But we know you are working on it. :)

 

What about finding a nice geographical location, and Drill a giant hole. A hole that goes deep into the Earth. Pour the sludge in it. Seal it. Forget it.??

Kinda like Boerseuns idea, but only on land so the Oceans won't be affected if something did go wrong.

 

:) :shrug:

[Boerseun]

We've got a few mines in South Africa that goes down almost 4 kilometers. There are literally mountains of processed ore lying around the Reef, and can be seen from space as a series of yellow ridges defining the extend of the reef. That volume came from the mines, and thats the volume of empty space from worked-out mines thats lying open underground.

 

Cast the barrels in concrete like I said in my last post, and start stackin' them underground. Eventually, just fill the mine with whatever crap is still lying around, and just seal it!

 

The world will run on nuclear fuel for thousands of years before generating enough nuclear waste to fill even one of these mines.

 

Didn't think about the convection issue... :shrug:

[Kayra]

That concept is under consideration.

 

Canada has this HUGE granite rock.. Called the Canadian Shield. (shown in red on map)

 

The "formations of choice" are large, single intrusions called batholiths, formed between one and two billion years ago, and geologically stable since that time.

Other criteria met by grantitic batholiths are low mineral (and therefore economic) value, and low ground-water movement rates.

 

Drill down 500-1000 meter.

Make your nuclear concrete.

Pour

Cap.

 

Of course, it will cost you :shrug:

[Boerseun]

Of course, it will cost you :shrug:

Much less than any space-based solution, by far.

 

Like the miners of old, the nuclear waste-dump miners will also carry a canary in a cage to see if conditions are safe. Once the canary mutates, it's time to get the hell out of there!

[Jay-qu]

what type of radiation does the spent fuel emit? alpha, beta, gamma? or a cocktail of other nasties?

[ronthepon]

It would be easier to shoot the stuff out of the Solar System entirely.

 

Why not do this?

[Boerseun]

Why not do this?

EXPENSIVE...

[Racoon]

what type of radiation does the spent fuel emit? alpha, beta, gamma? or a cocktail of other nasties?

 

Mmmmm.

And what kind of Radiation would you like today Jay-qu?? I suggest try the Gamma rays, and you might turn Green and into the Incredible Hulk. :hihi:

 

Beta.

(and if I'm wrong, we'll start talking science again)

:evil: