Stolen and Barbecued Lightning

[Jim Lewis]

The new tech like SMRs are under development which are smaller and safer. I am all for it.

We seem to have strayed a bit from the thread topic. Just to note, though, the U.S. has not yet gotten rid of the Manhattan Project's waste (the Yucca Mountain repository was deep-sixed). That waste was generated ~80 years ago, relatively soon (at the rate we're going) to be 100 years ago...and it's in "temporary" holding areas around the country...It is probably not a good idea to revive the input part of an industry until everyone's agreed on a political solution to the output end of the industry, i.e., what to do with nuclear waste that requires dependable isolation for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.

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[Maxx]

We seem to have strayed a bit from the thread topic. Just to note, though, the U.S. has not yet gotten rid of the Manhattan Project's waste (the Yucca Mountain repository was deep-sixed). That waste was generated ~80 years ago, relatively soon (at the rate we're going) to be 100 years ago...and it's in "temporary" holding areas around the country...It is probably not a good idea to revive the input part of an industry until everyone's agreed on a political solution to the output end of the industry, i.e., what to do with nuclear waste that requires dependable isolation for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.

Moon?

 

[roadhouse]

Moon?

If you're sending it to space, why to the Moon? Shoot it into the sun or into deep space or something.

The real reason we don't send it to space is the risk of a rocket exploding in the atmosphere, full of nuclear waste.

 

[Old Aviator]

That and the fact we have thousands of dry cask canisters full of spent fuel weighing 150 tons each and no rocket that can launch a 150 ton payload.
The heaviest object sent past earth orbit was about 110 tons and that was the Saturn 5 that sent Apollos to the moon. Apollo payload was 141 tons but had to use some of its fuel (30 tons) to actually achieve orbit. So nominally 110 tons to leave earth orbit.
So my WAG is we would need to build and launch probably 30 Saturn 5's a year just stay even with fuel burn in US operating plants and size reduce all currently stored fuel by 1/3 to accommodate the lift capacity of a Saturn 5.
Only 15 Saturn 5s were ever built, and none since 1972.
So while I have always thought its a "great idea" (since if all went from the Cape Canaveral the worst that might happen would be a fuel cask ending up deep in the Atlantic ocean) the technology need to accomplish it is vaporware at this time.

And while I'm not an expert on this subject, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express one night!

 

[Maxx]

@roadhouse , @Old Aviator You guys are putting a damper on my dream of crapping up another Celestial body.

Between SpaceX and Chinese in a race to see who can put up more satellites in orbit and Russians trying to get better in blowing them up, by the time we have the tech to put waste in space, we won't be able to get out.

 

[Jim Lewis]

@roadhouse , @Old Aviator You guys are putting a damper on my dream of crapping up another Celestial body.

The subject of "Why aren't we doing more with nuclear power?" has come up before on the forum: https://www.f150lightningforum.com/...mentary-chasing-carbon-zero.15320/post-314637

Shooting nuclear waste into the sun is an old idea. Besides the risk of rocket failure and payload limits, there is also the COST, which would be prohibitive. Constructing and operating a nuclear power plant is already prohibitively expensive compared to other forms of energy generation, and exporting waste to space would make it exponentially more so. If only conventional fission reactors were used, the world's known uranium reserves would not last very long; if breeder reaction technology were used, our uranium supply would last much longer and generate much less nuclear waste, but then the risk of nuclear proliferation would be greatly increased as breeder technology makes plutonium easy to come by.

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