Hi! It's actually more dangerous to do that! The amount of explosions due to space flight is relatively high! This would cause essentially a dirty bombs. Some nuclear reactors can actually use nuclear waste as fuel, alternatively places like WIPP naturally encase the waste in salt and keep it from entering the water table and protect those who live near by. The biggest problem is that people don't understand radiation, and proper handling of radiation is expensive so people cut corners to save money which has never harmed anyone. Lol
There is a ton of fissile material in most types of nuclear waste which can be recycled and burnt again in conventional reactors. Breeder reactors are able to produce more fissile material than it burns so theoretically they can extract 50x more power from the same slug of fuel than a conventional reactor can. Recycling can significantly decrease the amount and intensity of nuclear waste.
The big problem for both is that you have to do fuel reprocessing, which is not currently economical given the low cost of uranium and reprocessing is how you get plutonium for nuclear weapons so the technology is closely guarded and monitered by the nuclear powers.
Yup reprocessing and breeders are hard to come by because they can be used to produce weapons grade material and require more "red tape" . The IAEA will be all over a breeder reactor. /Reprocessing plant.
France decommissioned theirs in 2010 after finding they were just way too expensive to run. Currently Russia and India still have units (India is building another that should come online this year). Japan did recently as well but it was decommissioned in 2017.
yeah sending canisters of depleted uranium into the atmosphere so it can explode and shower a continent in fallout would in fact be really stupid, but what if we construct a space station to which we ship yellow cake or uranium ore or less reactive nuclear material to be refined and used in space. With the energy sent down somehow and the nuclear waste shot into the sun.
we should just send our nuclear waste into the sun
Hi! It's actually more dangerous to do that! The amount of explosions due to space flight is relatively high! This would cause essentially a dirty bombs. Some nuclear reactors can actually use nuclear waste as fuel, alternatively places like WIPP naturally encase the waste in salt and keep it from entering the water table and protect those who live near by. The biggest problem is that people don't understand radiation, and proper handling of radiation is expensive so people cut corners to save money which has never harmed anyone. Lol
There is a ton of fissile material in most types of nuclear waste which can be recycled and burnt again in conventional reactors. Breeder reactors are able to produce more fissile material than it burns so theoretically they can extract 50x more power from the same slug of fuel than a conventional reactor can. Recycling can significantly decrease the amount and intensity of nuclear waste.
The big problem for both is that you have to do fuel reprocessing, which is not currently economical given the low cost of uranium and reprocessing is how you get plutonium for nuclear weapons so the technology is closely guarded and monitered by the nuclear powers.
Yup reprocessing and breeders are hard to come by because they can be used to produce weapons grade material and require more "red tape" . The IAEA will be all over a breeder reactor. /Reprocessing plant.
I think only the French have had a breeder ...
France decommissioned theirs in 2010 after finding they were just way too expensive to run. Currently Russia and India still have units (India is building another that should come online this year). Japan did recently as well but it was decommissioned in 2017.
yeah sending canisters of depleted uranium into the atmosphere so it can explode and shower a continent in fallout would in fact be really stupid, but what if we construct a space station to which we ship yellow cake or uranium ore or less reactive nuclear material to be refined and used in space. With the energy sent down somehow and the nuclear waste shot into the sun.