Can we dispose of nuclear waste in outer space?

Dinarius

Serious question.

With so much talk focused on the need for countries like Ireland to reconsider nuclear power and, in particular, small modular nuclear reactors; but, with the ever present question of waste disposal, I’m asking…

Is disposal of nuclear waste in space viable?

Thanks.

D.

Glaceon

Rockets can and do fail. The failure of a rocket carrying nuclear waste could be very significant.

SuperBowserWorld

I remember one of the Superman movies where superman flies all the nuclear warheads into space, fires them at the sun and creates this evil superman. Might have been superman 4.

But, back to real life ...

I think it's too risky, right now, with current rocket technology to do this, as it could all blow up in the atmosphere. But maybe in the future when rockets are more reliable ?

corner of hells

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058266599/can-we-dispose-of-nuclear-waste-in-outer-space

Yes , but you've to stay up there with waste , cause it was your idea.

Sorta like Guardian of the Waste.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718204#Comment_119718204

definitely a job for the man in his underpants

o1s1n

**** rockets, what we'd need is a space elevator to a space station and then to move it on from there.

Well, you could... but:

1. Rocket blows up and scatters nuclear waste across a huge area causing massive contamination and rendering the place uninhabitable.
2. It's obscenely expensive to launch rockets into space and also very environmentally damaging. It's not something you could really do on a routine basis for waste management.
3. Unless you're going VERY far out into space, the waste would likely end up in orbit.

AndrewJRenko

Sure why not? We've screwed up our own planet so we might as well see what other parts of the universe we can screw up now.

I reckon a really, really big trebuchet aimed at the moon is all we'd need.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058266599/can-we-dispose-of-nuclear-waste-in-outer-space

No need. All levels of nuclear wast can be stabilised by incorporating them in what amounts to a synthetic rock which has a similar chemical composition to natural rocks, some of which have remained stable for over 2 billion years. The process is called Synroc. It's used at sellafield, Argone national laboratory in the US and in Australia.

If nuclear energy were the only source of electricity that powered your entire life, all of the nuclear waste generated from that could be contained in a piece of Synroc the size of a can of soup.

Deep below the earths surface, in many places, are thick layers of salt formed from evaporating oceans, hundreds of millions of years ago. These layers of salt are utterly impermeable to anything, even hydrogen, whose molecules are so small that they can pass through many solids under pressure. Some of these layers of salt have remained stable for 300 million years.

It would be quite easy to deposit nuclear waste in the form of Synroc, in such salt deposits several km below the surface. Such waste would be safely dealt with for probably hundreds of millions of years. The Synroc itself might be stable for billions of years, like the rock it copies.

SuperBowserWorld

We could get the Irish government to cover all loss and damage worldwide due to an accident.

They are very good at using our money to bailout everyone else except us.

😝😝😝

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718259#Comment_119718259

Ah give over you, ya misery. We'd still be in the cave if it were up to you.

But no, rockets are too unreliable yet for dangerous and toxic payloads.

If a safer system is developed though, shooting waste of any sort into deep space is definitely worth consideration.

corner of hells

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718261#Comment_119718261

Sounds good , but we'd have to fire it at night , might cost a bit more with the overtime.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718312#Comment_119718312

Sorry for suggesting that we should be vaguely socially responsible with the limited resources on the planet that keeps us alive.

Mayor Quimby level thinking is obviously alive and well.

El Tarangu

Why complicate matters? Just keep in a big swimming pool while it is still really radioactive, and then move to a big cask like we do currently.

I think people really overestimate how little space we actually need to store nuclear waste.

igCorcaigh

There is nothing wrong with nuclear waste. It's packed in to little concrete constructions, and has never harmed anyone. Chemical waste or the burning of combustibles though, another story.

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718261#Comment_119718261

or just spin it really really fast and then let go

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718618#Comment_119718618

You're not, youre suggesting we shouldn't pollute space, which is irrelevant, as space is one big radiation pit anyway and so nothing humans could send up there could make it any more hostile.

Apology accepted anyway.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119719728#Comment_119719728

Like I said, Mayor Quimby would be proud

https://cce.ucdavis.edu/news/pollution-space-damage-we-cause

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119719738#Comment_119719738

just launch it further, it'll be grand...

Ger Roe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119719783#Comment_119719783

Be careful what you wish for.

Space 1999 had an episode called 'Voyager's Return' where a nuclear powered earth launched probe had travelled through the universe spreading deadly radiation in its aftermath, from its Queller Drive engine. It caused the Chief Justifier of the Worlds of Sidon, to track down Moonbase Alpha and seek to destroy it, in revenge for the millions of deaths that Voyager had caused on two worlds that it had passed.

Moonbase Alpha was located on our moon, itself wandering aimlessly through space because it was blasted from orbit following a nuclear waste dump explosion.

It's all true : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager%27s_Return

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718220#Comment_119718220

You'd need him doing it as a full time job. There's a lot of nuclear waste out there and its also surprisingly hard to actually get something to crash into the sun. You can't just throw it at the sun because it carries the earth's orbital velocity and it would miss and end up in a highly eccentric orbit that could end up anywhere

Superman would need to take a few maths classes and swot up on orbital dynamics

cnocbui

I think the nuclear waste thing could in the future turn out to be almost amusing, when our descendents find themselves having a vital use for it: 'why did those idiot ancestors of ours make this precious stuff so hard to get to? We've been digging for six months and we're only half way there!'

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718763#Comment_119718763

If the people doing the estimate only looked at Switzerland, then that could be true. But even a small storage area going faulty, could be a disaster for millions of people.

How much nuclear waste is in the world right now?

In brief. More than a quarter million metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in storage near nuclear power plants and weapons production facilities worldwide, with over 90,000 metric tons in the US alone.30 Mar 2020

beachhead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058266599/can-we-dispose-of-nuclear-waste-in-outer-space

There are supposedly international treaties that ban disposal of any waste in the earth's atmosphere.Where are you proposing the waste be jettisoned to?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119720824#Comment_119720824

Not a single person has died as as a result of nuclear waste storage. Using hyperbole is just stupid. Planes can crash killing lots of people, non nuclear industrial accidents kill thousands every year. Gas explosions have killed many thousands of people and yet we will continue to put up with the risks associated with all these.

Nuclear waste is benign compared to many other things.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119718229#Comment_119718229

Ding...

Dohhhhs Opening!

Capt'n Midnight

Cosmos 954 was a Russian satellite with a BES-5 nuclear reactors fuelled by uranium-235. It got splatted across the landscape of Canada. https://www.dianuke.org/cosmos-954-nuclear-powered-satellite-that-fell-from-space/ Nuclear waste falling from space is something that's already happened.

There's different grades of nuclear waste. The really nasty stuff that has to be kept in cooling ponds. Probably the easiest to deal with in the sense that it's got a short half life so will mostly decay within living memory.

The very low grade stuff they discharge into the environment link BNFL and the Irish Sea.

That leaves the medium and low grades that currently isn't put into forever dumps because no one has built a proper one yet. SpaceX are charging 10's of millions per rocket. You could get several m3 of nuclear waste into low earth orbit. Or a lot less into a higher orbit where it wouldn't come back so soon. To launch it beyond earth's orbit you would would need bigger rockets or reduce the payload to small amounts.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119722677#Comment_119722677

All the people who died dealing with Chernobyl say differently. Once the place had blown everything they were handling was waste. Loads of people dying of cancers by leaking waste sites doesn't happen according to you.

You like to say there is a solution but it isn't in use to deal with waste and as such unproven.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119724941#Comment_119724941

Even taking chernobyl into account, the attributable deaths for nuclear energy are miniscule and vastly les than for almost every other source of energy production. The figures are about the same as for wind and solar, and chernobyl's aftermath was not nuclear waste.

As for your other false claim:

Synroc for Plutonium Disposal...A pyrochlore-rich titanate ceramic has been chosenby the US DOE for excess weapons Pu immobilisation in the USA... The Australian Nuclear Science and TechnologyOrganisation (ANSTO) has been developingtitanate ceramic wasteforms since 1980 through itssynroc program. ANSTO is participating with theLawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).the lead laboratory on plutonium immobilisation forthe US DOE office of Fissile Materials Disposition(MD). Other members of the team are ArgonneNational Laboratory, Pacific Northwest NationalLaboratory and the Westinghouse Savannah RiverCompany Technology Center. The US DOE hasexpressed a preference for siting the immobilisationfacility at the Savannah River site and current plansenvisage that the facility would be fully operationalby 2006/7

https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/31/033/31033868.pdf

An Australian process for disposing of nuclear waste has emerged as a front runner for cleaning up atomic power plants and obsolete warheads.

The Synroc, or synthetic rock process, was invented by the late Australian nuclear physicist Ted Ringwood in 1978.

This month, after years of low budget and low key refinement, it won a multimillion dollar "demonstration" contract to eliminate 5 tonnes of plutonium contaminated waste at British Nuclear Fuel's Sellafield plant, on the northwest coast of England.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/22/2003251453

And in Australia, they built a nuclear medicine facility that produces radio isotopes for use in Australian hospitals that also includes a synroc processing section that takes all of Australia's nuclear waste and transforms it into synroc:

Looks pretty real for something that doesn't exist.

B.A._Baracus

What happens when our nuclear waste lands on blurgon 5 and the blurgons start a war with us?

Didn't think about that did you Mr op!

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119724941#Comment_119724941

of course there has been plenty of deaths due to the use of nuclear, but there probably has been far more deaths from the use of fossil fuels, modern nuclear safety standards are far superior than the past, which has significantly lowered potential deaths from its use, it truly is a real alternative now, but its very unlikely ireland will move towards this source, so expect our energy supplies to remain uncertain until its acceptance....

Timfy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119720824#Comment_119720824

There is way more than 250,000 tonnes of highly polluting, toxic waste to be found at any single coal mine, gas extraction facility and oil well over the course of a year... not a lifetime. And it's doing a pretty good job of fecking things up in ways the nuclear industry can only dream of!

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119722677#Comment_119722677

https://devastatingdisasters.com/kyshtym-nuclear-disaster-1957/

"At least 200 people died of radiation sickness and it is estimated that several hundred more died from radiation-related cancers. Over a period of 45 years more than 500,000 people were exposed to radiation, many of them at levels 20 times greater than the victims of Chernobyl."

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119727765#Comment_119727765

That's Russia and doesn't count - and I am being entirely serious. From Chernobyl to nuclear powered cruise missiles blowing up, to entire towns being wiped out in the cold war due to nuclear accidents, to nuclear subs sinking, almost all things bad attributable to things nuclear involve Russia/USSR.

That disaster did not involve nuclear waste from a power plant and is more akin to the Russians blowing themselves up with a dirty bomb.

The most commonly quoted estimate is 200 deaths due to cancer, but the origin of this number is not clear. More recent epidemiological studies suggest that around 49 to 55 cancer deaths among riverside residents can be associated to radiation exposure.

https://dyatlovpass.com/kyshtym-disaster

Scientific American (April 2, 2013) Nuclear power may have saved 1.8 million lives otherwise lost to fossil fuels, may save up to 7 million more

Did you know 10 people were just killed in Donegal due to a gas explosion? Would you like to compare the death toll attributable to gas vs nuclear? It's thousands per year world wide.

Ger Roe

With regard to the safety of nuclear v other fuel sources.

Sure there are far more deaths attributed to the use of coal/gas/oil etc, but there is a far higher use of such sources worldwide, much more plants producing and using those fuels, so it is inevitable that the associated death tolls will be far higher annually and over a far longer time. In comparison, there have been a handful of nuclear accidents, but when they happen, they have the potential to be really bad.

Also while I accept that nuclear as an industry, is now far safer than it was, we as humans are not. Most of the accidents that have happened are due to someone cutting corners, or screwing up. Even now, after all that we already know, Mr Putin is playing with missiles around the biggest nuclear plant in Europe and he has trampled all over what was the very carefully restricted access Chernobyl site.

We as a race, can not be trusted to take care of the world. We prove that every single day. The idea of firing nuclear waste in to space, reminds me of the old T shirt slogan .... 'The Earth First!, We'll screw up the other planets later.'

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119730293#Comment_119730293

The energy safety and mortality statistics are calculated on a basis of how much energy is produced from each source vs deaths. So it's got nothing to do with greater use of sources. There are 426 nuclear power reactors in opperation. Here you go - deaths per trillion watts of energy produced: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natural-gas-and-the-new-deathprint-for-energy/

Ger Roe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119730524#Comment_119730524

My head hurts reading that, but I accept it's findings, in the way the stats are produced ... nuclear is the most productive source with less plant producing more energy.

It is probably a bit overkill in answering the actual thread posed question - "Can we dispose of nuclear waste in outer space?"

IMHO the answer is... Of course we can. We have the technology to do it, but we probably shouldn't ,..... so at some point, someone probably will. Particularly now that access to space is no longer government controlled.

I think my bottom line still applies.... we can not be trusted to look after ourselves and our planet, or any other planet. Wait until someone goes back to the moon, it won't be long after before claims are made for territories and mining rights, no matter what international treaties apply..... particularly as things get tougher here on earth because of what we have already done to the planet.

When the going gets tough... the tough will do whatever they want to, regardless of the consequences for others. The future for humanity is bleak, because there isn't a shared responsibility approach to management of the planet.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119730757#Comment_119730757

What failure rate would be OK ?

Would one in a thousand rockets exploding and sending radioactive waste all over the launch site be OK ?

It would end the project till you got a new launch site.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 is the only launcher we have that's done more than 100 launches in a row that put the payload into the right orbit. Lots of them exploded during development though, at least one exploded during pre flight tests (taking out a Facebook satellite so that's a silver lining). It'll be a long time before we can be 99% sure what goes up stays up.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058266599/can-we-dispose-of-nuclear-waste-in-outer-space

You haven't returned to comment on the answers to your serious question. I think you should.

Thanks.

DX.

Dinarius

No consensus on disposing on waste in space. I didn't expect there would be since cost and safety are hard to quantify.

If it's true that deaths or issues of safety are greater from other fuels, or from active reactors, then storage may be the least of the problem.

The point about more deaths occurring from other fuels is well made. We are pre-programmed to react to any mention of the "n" word, while forgetting that it's record stands up to the safety record of other fuels.

Slightly off topic, but in true Irish fashion, we are soon to begin importing nuclear generated electricity from France. Like condoms in the post from the UK, a classic Irish solution to an Irish problem.

Our dysfunctional planning system is wrecking progress in energy - the north-south inter-connector has been mired in planning for over 20 years - so, talk of one or two small reactors is the stuff of fantasy, I'll admit.

Which makes my original question moot, I guess.

Thanks for the replies.

D.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119719738#Comment_119719738

What idiot wrote that?

"everything in space stays there unless we bring it back down" Have they never heard of orbital decay? Skylab? That's not to say that space junk isn't a problem.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119727765#Comment_119727765

A weapons plant. Bzzt. Try again.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733432#Comment_119733432

The link to France works both ways and we will be rolling out more wind.

Also most French nuclear plants have been offline since April because corrosion issues because they too old to. It will be a while before France is exporting Nuclear and because they are reducing from 75% to 50% installed capacity it's unlikely they'll be nett exporters of nuclear long term.

Costs of disposing waste in space are astronomic. The flyaway cost of the currently delayed SLS is about $4Bn, if you exclude all of the R&D. There's a lot of low level waste , and the really hot stuff decays quickly enough that it's easier to keep an eye on it down here. There's lots of medium level waste and that's the real problem.

Capt'n Midnight

Ocean trenches in subduction zones.

Dill a big home at the bottom drop in the glow in the dark. It will be taken deeper. And will come back out of a volcano :pac:

(this won't happen because subduction zones move at a few cm a year so the radioactivity will have dropped off long before that)

Bottom of the deep ocean is fine. In the deepest parts of the ocean, there's barely anything down there. Radiation weakens by half every seven inches or something in water, which is why you can swim in a pool with nuclear waste and be fine.

The general population are hideous at understanding this sort of thing with likely a majority of Irish people not knowing nuclear energy is just heating up water, turning it to steam, and spinning turbines. They'd imagine the ocean flowing green with radiation because of some cartoon showing that.

"Can humans not destroy another part of the world" I can already here someone saying. The amount of lives saved by nuclear power instead of fossil fuels is more than worth the seven unknown sea creatures that will perish at 7000m below the surface of the ocean.

A lot of this stuff has been dumped into the seas around Ireland, and that's not sound. I'm talking about doing it in the middle of the Pacific. Maybe where all the satellites are crashed.

ablelocks

The Finns have it sorted, no need for space, we can send it to them....

Finland built this tomb to store nuclear waste | Science | AAAS

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119742094#Comment_119742094

Uranium salts are water soluble. If you can make make a leak proof container that's resistant to salt water corrosion under 70,000 atmospheres of pressure you can make one that's stable in a dry room.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119745704#Comment_119745704

They started the project in 1983 and it's still not sorted. Due to open in 2024 as long as there aren't more delays.

There simply aren't any proper long term nuclear waste facilities in operation anywhere in the world yet.

bad2thebone

This is just a what if....

No point in contaminating space with our rubbish, last thing we need is something like Species 8472 or worse telling us we've contaminated their space. Or drawing attention to ourselves from a pissed off entity for fly tipping somewhere that's not ours.

cj maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119725112#Comment_119725112

But the blurgons eat nuclear waste. It’s their staple diet. They’d probably repay us in nasty sh.it like gold 😏