Re:Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way
by galangalalgol on Friday July 05, 2019 @11:17AM
(#20363136)
how much weight is it? with cheaper launch costs could we get it out of Earth orbit fo less?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
The risk of a launch failure causing highly radioactive stuff to rain down on the surface of the earth is just WAY WAY bigger than the risk of some leak in a geological repository in 100k years (when practically all of the truly nasty stuff has long decayed away).
Re:Safer Nuclear Reactors Are on the Way
by acidburnNSA on Friday July 05, 2019 @12:00PM
(#20363521)
90,000 metric tonnes in the US of high-level waste (incredibly low given that it's produced ~20% of our electricity carbon free for 40 years). You'd have to also launch a bunch of heavy shielding with that just for handling purposes, so be conservative and multiply by 10.
You'd need a really reliable launch process like a space elevator to do this without worrying about dispersing it around in the atmosphere. It's worth talking about but it's hard to imagine a socially-acceptable pathway at the moment. Deep geologic repositories are safe and known. We should just use them.