Moon Seen As Nuclear Waste Repository

I was just citing a fictional cartoon show.

But since you opened the can of worms Semuri, I have to ask how do you suppose we can control something hurtling toward Earth, (the fact that we can control it while it's here is a moot point) especially when the means of how we send it out into space have yet to be confirmed?

Why the moon or sun? Why not any other of the planets or moons in out solar system? Mars is a lot closer than the sun.. But your arguements are going to be, we may want to inhabit mars some day. Well then don't shoot it to the moon either because we might want to inhabit that. So the sun seems like a good option.. Besides.. I think it would be pretty funny if a flaming pile of garbage hit the earth in a few years. LoL you can already imagine the newspaper articles..

UV Rays and whatever else the sun sends to earth may send hazardis, more intense radiation with it, it would be extremely unhealthy to the environment and us. Ur treating a truck sized nuclear waste ball like an asteroid the size of texas...seriously, this isnt armegeddon or deep impact here. Its the size of a truck, and by then thered be more space stations, all wed need do is launch a missile at it, or get some astronauts to land on it and redirect its course, maybe emergency onboard computer controls just in case...

also, the chances of it returning to Earth are very, very slim, lol

[Edited on 10-9-2002 by Semuri]

I think the problem lies more so with getting it out of the atmosphere. If a rocket were to break up in the atmosphere then it would shower the earth with nuclear waste.
Also if we can send satellites to other planets how hard could it be sending waste to the sun ?

Well, it sounds like a GOOD idea to me!
But than I live Really close to Yucca Mountain. So does my vote count?

IT WOULD NE UNHEALTHY FOR US AND THE ENVIRONMENT IF WE SENT WASTE TO THE SUN! MORE CANCER! MORE SKIN HARM! WED PRACTICALLY BE FRYING OURSELVES AS IF WE WERE INSIDE A MICROWAVE---LITERALLY!

It wouldn't have any effect on the sun. Merely *one* of its sunspots generates astronomically more amounts of radioactivity than all of the Earth's *combined* radioactive materials...

...It wouldn't even be enough to make the sun "hiccup"...


[Edited on 11-9-2002 by MidnightDStroyer]

Most likely it would not even reach the sun. It would vaporize long before it reached it.

i'd like to ask this - perhaps someone can answer this for me - what is the payload of an ICBM?

i ask because i'd be surprised if its more than a few tons at most. now consider that the yucca site is planned for 77,000 tons - and that's just one site. my guess is that we're looking at a sh!t load of rockets, which means and absolute sh!t load of fuel. this solution is unworkable unless we could find some other way to power those rockets.

but i'd like to leave my final judgement until i have those figures and can make some calculations.

- qo.

The ICBM with the largest throw weight is the Russian SS-18 Satan. It has a payload of between 7200kg to 8800kg.

fas.org...

Originally posted by William One Sac
www.space.com...

As the debate rages over using the Yucca Mountain as a burial ground for thousands of tons of radioactive material, a better site for unwanted nuclear waste holds its mute vigil in the skies above the Nevada desert: the Moon.

After 20 years of study, last July President Bush signed a bill making Yucca Mountain the planned site to house 77,000 tons of nuclear refuse. The site is to be open for business by 2010, located in Nevada desert, 90 miles (150 kilometers) from that gambling Mecca, Las Vegas

Since its approval, politicians, scientists, lawyers, environmental activists, and protesting citizens have been locked in heated dispute over the $58 billion project.

Advocates of the plan say the repository site is safe. Radioactive materials can be responsibly and securely tucked away in the mountain for some 10,000 years.

However, others fear, among a list of worries, that transporting nuclear waste over city streets and state highways is asking for trouble, as well as being a tempting target for terrorists.

"No site for a long term, nuclear waste repository within Earth's biome or accessible to low-tech terrorist threat is acceptable," argues Sherwin Gormly, an environmental engineer for Tetra Tech EM Incorporated in Reno, Nevada.

Gormly contends that the waste issue is the single most important problem limiting nuclear power development. A revolutionary change, he said, is required to break the impasse.

"We need to seriously reconsider more advanced concepts, including repository options on the Moon," Gormly said.

MIRVing the Moon

In the past, thoughts about a lunar nuclear waste repository have come and gone.

A new twist in the Gormly plan is using off-the-shelf intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), warhead targeting technology, and a reusable suborbital launch vehicle. It's an idea whose time may have returned, he said, broaching the notion last month at a Return to the Moon workshop held in Houston, Texas, held by the Space Frontier Foundation.

The concept employs a low-cost, highly reliable suborbital space plane. Flying to high altitude, the piloted plane then dispatches an ICBM upper stage assembly. Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) hardware, guidance equipment, and modified reentry vehicles carrying a casks of plutonium or waste material top this stage, which ignites and speeds into space.

An internal targeting system within the reentry vehicles precisely places the casks of waste headlong onto an outbound lunar trajectory.

The target would be a small lunar crater with steep sides. In later years, the flight path of the casks could be aided by final guidance equipment installed on the crater rim. That will assure an even more accurate bulls-eye impact of the incoming waste-carrying containers.

One by one, the casks smack into the Moon. The soft deep lunar regolith in the impact area should ensure proper waste burial. Plowing into the lunar surface at high speed, the waste would be buried under several feet of glassified regolith, Gormly said.

The impact area would be highly contaminated, the environmental engineer said, so a clearly delineated repository area would be needed. "However, the problem of waste migration would be eliminated because the lunar surface has no hydrosphere."

Retrieval, reuse, reprocessing

The situation in Nevada is a classic case of the "Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) syndrome," Gormly said. Furthermore, the reality of the situation is that waste streams from medical sources and weapons grade plutonium production are also of concern.

"A solution outside of the biome and out of casual reach must be found," Gormly said.

"The lunar surface is a sterile, hard radiation environment with great geological stability and no potential to pollute the Earth biome�a potential that is inevitable to all Earth sites due to groundwater," Gormly said. "NIMBY politics don't apply to the lunar surface at this time and can be avoided in the future by good planning and negotiation of beneficial use agreements," he added.

Once deposited on the Moon, nuclear materials would be of potential value. Access to the lunar repository site by future Moon dwellers could be regulated. Retrieval, reuse, even reprocessing of the nuclear material can enhance both lunar operations and further deep space commerce, Gormly speculated.

"The reality of the situation is that this material is a political liability today and a resource tomorrow," Gormly told SPACE.com.

The development of a lunar waste repository is an off-world opportunity to develop positive political and social momentum. This proposal is simple, safe, and uses current off-the-shelf technology, Gormly said.

Not so fast

Gormly shouldn't be so quick to attempt to unload Earth's nuclear rubbish on our nearest neighbor, says Mike Duke, a lunar expert at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Co.

"This doesn't appear to be a practical proposal at the current state of technical development," Duke told SPACE.com. "In the proposed configuration, it would essentially end lunar exploration."

Duke said that even the highest reliability attained by a space booster also comes with catastrophic launch failure probabilities. Then it's a matter of acceptable risk of how much nuclear material might come back at Earth.

Lastly, the impact of these nuclear waste-carrying casks on the Moon would not bury them in glass, Duke said. They would be distributed widely on the Moon, as impacts tend to include most of the impactor in the ejecta - the material tossed out from the high speed crash, he said.

"The Moon would quickly become off-limits to human exploration and development. If a technique for soft landing could be incorporated, this problem would be minimized; however, that is likely to be quite expensive," Duke said.

www.clivebanks.co.uk... read this - stranger then fiction????


btw - i got both seasons on dvd - very good series ... they dont makem like this anymore.

no way! we ruined our own planet why do we have to ruin another one!

Here's a question for the people in AZ arguing that they don't want this material "transported through thier cities and streets"

Sending the material to the moon is going to fix this? Or is it just a selfish attempt to get the material transported through someone elses city and streets?

The material wont just magically pop up on the moon, it has to be transported to a launch site.

So regardless of where we send it, it poses a problem. I say bury the # in the desert and forget about it.

I think nuclear waste is scary where ever we put it. Firing it up into space could be a great risk. Was it a Russian nuclear powered probe that broke up on take off? That was of great concern at the time.

Personally I would go with the Sun option, even if it did have a huge cost. Safety would be worth it right?

As for firing it out into deep space, well I guess that might make a few folks on other planets a bit mad.

lol I've heard this "solution" so many times and it still makes me laugh. Think about it. Let's say 5 tonne of highly radioactive nuclear waste...sitting in a rocket...with however many thousand litres of highly explosive rocket fuel. Rocket lifts off. 5kms up, blows up. Whoops! Sorry! Didn't meant to create three eyed fish and malformed children!

Would you REALLY be comfortable with shoving a coupla tonnes of nuclear waste into todays rockets, which still regularly malfunction? I'd want a rocket with 99.99% reliability before I'd even consider such an idea. And yes, the sun would be a better place to send it. You don't need to be accurate. Just aim in a fairly accurate direction of the sun & let the suns gravity do the rest. The material would vaporise LONG before it actually hit the suns surface. And no, it wouldn't create more radiation coming to earth.

The moon is just a lump of dead rock but still, let's not pollute other planets, even if they are dead when a sun will clean up our mess with no residual after affects.

Well, that's my two cents

The best way how to get rid of the waste is to shoot it to the Jupiter, or outside the solar system. It takes less energy when compared to the "sun solution". And the best way how to do it would be EM accelerator (or huge railgun if you want). It is 100% secure, because once the cargo is "fired" there is no way that it could get back to the earth (or explode in atmosphere like rockets).

A few questions around this:

My Nuclear Physics education was a while back but, the Sun is basically a large fusion reaction i.e. Hydrogen etc are combined to make higher materials to the midpoint of the reaction energy. (Around Iron if i remember correctly) if we put higher level atoms into the equation how will this effect the sun?? (These materials require a fission reaction to reduce thier atomic number)

The launch explosion risk is an constant, the fact they intend to use high altitude launchers may minimise this?

The payload of these rockets is very small, that's a hell of a cost?

Do we have the moral right to dump our waste on an orbital body?

One day the moon may be useful, but as we are already destroying our own planet, why not make a headstart on ruining our nearest orbital to further send ourselves down the creek without a propulsion aid of any nature?

In my mind if we use any of these options it all amounts to flytipping in the galaxy, we need to be responsible for the waste we make, not just dump it somewhere when no one is looking!

You can picture it now:

World leader: Welcome to earth, yuyuyebj.
yuyuyebj:Welcome to our federation.
.......(formalities long over and over post dinner drinks)
WL: So how's the wife/partner?
Y: I was married with 12 children, but one rotation a large piece of space nuclear waste hit my home and they all died painfully over a period of time as a result, is only we could find the inconsiderent B****rds and bring them to justice.


I know the above is a bit of fun but who knows the legacy this course of action could leave for the future...........

Why not look down rather than up? Inject the waste directly into the earths mantle.

im for sending it to the sun....

along with all are other trash

If The waste was sent to the sun, the 'Tree-Huggers; acuse that we are now trying to destroy the sun.

But I agree all the waste should be sent to the sun, and MELTED.