Moon Seen As Nuclear Waste Repository

This is an interesting article just appeared in Space.Com

The atricle goes into the possibility that we may start using the moon as an alternative site for dumping nuclear waste.

On the whole it is positive towards the idea, and it points out that we may later use the waste as a resource for reprocessing by Lunar settlers.

Phobos

So people aren't comfortable with driving it around in trucks, but we will put it in a rocket and shoot it to the moon??? Suppose there was an accident with the launch vehicle carrying tons of nuclear waste in the high atmosphere......then what? The article mentions it, but the advocate for this plan never states his thoughts on safety.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RalphVanDyke on 2002-08-23 00:44 ]</font>

sure, next thing you know it explodes, sending the moon and moon base alpha, careening off into the galaxy... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img]
wait, that was in 1999... nevermind! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

_________________
The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.
J. B. S. Haldane


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: moving_target on 2002-08-23 03:57 ]</font>

Look at the trouble with shooting a few kilograms Plutonium into space with Cassini and try to imagine the political trouble when you want to send up tons of nuclear waste.
And, if we really want to put nuclear waste into space - I don't know if this is even from the technical aspects a good idea - I'd say a solar orbit slightly within Earth's orbit would need less energy (no braking necessary) and would still keep the waste within our reach. Except we can do something useful with the waste on the Moon - like using it as an advanced propulsion system to travel with the Moon to weird places meeting even more weird people there.

Harald

I am surprised they are talking about using a spaceplane. Surely to raise a heavy load the first 60 Km or so the best and safest method for this sort of cargo would be a heavy loading blimp?

There would be plenty of details to sort out, but if I wanted to ship hazardous material to the moon this is how I would start. The heavy loading blimps may already exist in military service - the latest theory from the UFO community is that most black triangle sightings are just this (backed up by matching reported sightings with known USAF base locations).

Phobos

This is not a new idea of course. Larry Niven had just this set-up in his short story The Woman in Del Rey Crater. For years Earth had been lobbing it's nuclear waste into this crater on the Moon, with the idea that it might eventually be recovered and reprocessed. At the time of the story, that's exactly what was being done. Then one of the robot salvagers comes across a body in the middle of this uninhabitable wasteland and the mystery begins...

My idea for disposal of nuclear waste is to not mess around with the Moon and just send it into a freefall trajectory directly into the Sun. Then there'd be nothing left to worry about. The only trouble would still be the safety of launching it. But I think that could be overcome.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Unfortunately, the Sun is the most difficult to reach location in our solar system, as you'd need not only to leave Earth's gravity but also you've to cancel the 30km/s orbital speed of Earth around the Sun. Only feasible method would be a swing-by at Jupiter - giving him back some of the speed that the Pioneers and Voyagers took away from him. Would make the Society for the Preservation of Jupiter's Orbit (or what was the exact name?) happy... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Harald

It's not only a matter of height (getting above the atmosphere), but also a matter of speed (giving the initial push).

Harald

Let's just dig a really deep hole (down to molten rock) and throw waste of all sorts down there. Barring that, dig a less deep hole and wait some million years for it to be subducted.

I wonder how many windmills, solar arrays, geothermal pipes, etc, could be purchased and deployed for the cost of this endeavor.

It has been proposed to drop nuclear waste into deep ocean trenches and allow subduction to get rid of it over the (very) long term.

That's the ultimate in sweeping dirt under the rug, I'd say... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Would it be possible to send it to Venus? Afterall, nobody is ever going to walk on Venus!

I would just like to say that this is perhaps the most salient post in this thread. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Depends on how much money you have to spend on it.

That technique was used in a SF book by David Brin, when the planet was abandoned for a few million years to let it recover from having been inhabited by a "civilized" race.

The problem with the idea is that sometimes the material near the survace doesn't get subducted, but instead gets scraped off and ends up being added to the continent.

An example of this is the Olympic Mountains in Washington State of the US. Apparently, somehow the subduction zone got partially plugged or something.

Another obvious problem is that the subduction process is very slow, and the waste would have to sit on the bottom for thousands of years before being removed from the environment.

How slow? I don't know about the deep Pacific trenches, but the North Atlantic is spreading at about the same rate as fingernails grow. That's probably a good first-order approximation for subduction, too.

I'm not convinced that geothemal pipes and windmills can solve our energy problems. On the other hand, controlled nuclear fussion probably could. What we really need is an effort similar to the Apollo program (but on an even larger scale) to solve the problem on controlled fussion.

Imagine a world where we are dependent on neither vulnerable fission power plants nor fossile fuels from unstable parts of the world. Imagine eliminating one of the major sources of pollution and CO2 production (with it's related environmental impact).

Considering the upside of controlled fussion, why aren't we putting a lot more resources into developing it? The payoff would be a lot bigger than that for shooting spent uranium into space or even for putting a man on the moon.

Once the cost of disposal is attached to the cost of development we could make progress here. All the claims that alternative energy sources are not adequate or not cost effective are based on leaving out the cost of disposal and environmental cleanup when figuring the cost of fuels we use today. Sure nuclear energy seems cheap, as long as we the taxpayers foot the bill for cleanup.

__________________
The real news, including science news corporations may not allow on stations they own. http://www.democracynow.org/

The same could be said for hydrocarbon fuels. They generally don't include environmental or cleanup costs either.

Nuclear energy has some highly toxic wastes, but if you compare it to the waste products and environmental damage from oil-based fuel use, it really isn't any worse overall. It just has a bad image comparatively because it's a more visible problem in the public's eyes.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Most definitely. I would certainly include combustion fuels in the 'taxpayer subsidizes the industry by paying for environmental costs' category.

__________________
The real news, including science news corporations may not allow on stations they own. http://www.democracynow.org/

Nuclear waste is recycleable through breeder reactors. There are allot of industrial wastes that are more poisonous by any objective measure - and are saftly stored at low cost right here on earth. High level nuclear waste can last a long time, but it does'nt remain highly radioactive for nearly as long. In general, the more radioactive something is, the less long the radioactivity lasts. Many chemical poisons retain their toxicity indefinitly. These are facts.

The nuclear waste problem is a creation of people with economic and political interests exploiting the irrational fears of the public. I would have no problem living right next to a nuclear power plant or waste dump - if the land is cheap, it would be a great way to save money at the expense of the ignorant [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img].

check out this link. PBS's frontline did a great job debunking the many common myths regarding nuclear power

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cloudy on 2002-08-26 18:58 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cloudy on 2002-08-26 19:00 ]</font>