For all we know, that radioactive material may eventually be useful when heretofore undeveloped technologies are developed. It may be better to set aside a non-hellish planet as a repository, so that retrieval would be easier.
Why take it off-planet at all? After reprocessing, the total amount of nuclear waste produced each year could fit under your desk. Just cast it into leaded glass bricks and stack them in the middle of White Sands Missile Range. Put a fence around them at about a hundred yards with signs that say “Radioactive - If you cross this fence you will die.” Then just leave them there. We might need them someday. After all, the Romans just threw away all that petroleum that was waste product of their water wells.
Well, once you include the low-level stuff – the medical radioactive waste, etc. – it’s more than will just fit under a desk. And, while I can’t see any possible use for it, sure, Max the Immortal is right, put it somewhere that we can get it back if it does turn out to be useful.
(Leave it to an immortal to take the long view of things!)
Please don’t tell.
Mankind has destroyed one planet already, don’t let us spead our destruction to other planets.
The Rest of Humanity? No. By all means, no.
Just me.
Sounds good to me, but I no longer have the health to let me pioneer somewhere. But I bet there are more than enough adventurous people to start at least one colony world. And I bet that some of the more totalitarian overpopulated countries would be able to colonize at least one planet each.
Do you think North Korea would opt to take themselves off to another planet that would be entirely theirs? I bet some of the odder militia types would consider it.
I could see moving our waste to different planets, sorted into radioactive and nonradioactive categories.
Destroyed? Hyperbole much?
And on the topic of the thread, the OP specifies ‘hundreds of thousands of uninhabited inhabitable planets’, I’m struggling to see how this scenario could be anything but a win-win (assuming access is granted on anything like a reasonable basis).
From being stuck on one world humanity suddenly has an incredible number of worlds to populate and explore, its like one of the dreams of space exploration has suddenly become possible without the whole lengthy and messy process of actually getting to the new worlds.
All and all, everyone wins…unless you’re a misanthrope of course to which all I can say is meh…
Then again the main transporter would have to be carefully controlled as it seems to be the bottleneck allowing access to the Gates. Best case scenario is that it itself can be studied and replicated.
We haven’t destroyed any planets. We don’t even have the power to destroy a planet. At most we have the power to destroy ourselves. Far more species have gone extinct through natural agency than because of human intervention or exploitation.
No way you could release “a little” such information. Any slight and credible hint that you had some kind of teleportation technology and every spy agency, military power, and Fortune 500 company would be on your tail 24/7.
But IMO the OP is impossible anyway. I can’t imagine you can find, and use, the Gateway as an entirely solo project. How are you gonna test it? How can you know that there will be an identical system on the other end that you can use to get back?
Also, if you DON’T tell the rest of the world about it, what are you going to do with it? You can go exploring within a few miles of the Stargates of a few of the planets, but that’s not really going to tell you whether the planet is really habitable long-term. What if has a really eccentric orbit, and at the moment is at a reasonable distance from its sun, but at other times it’s as close as Venus or as far as Jupiter?
Making any use of it is far too big a project for one guy. You have 3 choices.
- Tell the world, hope you get some kind of substantial reward, and stand aside.
- Bury it, walk away and try to forget you ever found it.
- If you are really down on the human race as a whole, blow the thing up so nobody else can use it for EVIL.
Bring through items of virtue & val;ue (inventions, books, art, etc) that are common on those other worlds, but rare or unknown here.
Sell them.
Become rich.
Start a colony secretly.
I’m somewhat disappointed and surprised (though I probably shouldn’t be) at the lack of altruism in some/many of the replies here.
I’d be very altruistic with the find. Later. First I’m getting Gates-rich.
Unless there’s some reason why I have to remain alive and willing to cooperate, I don’t see any real set of circumstances (short of the base also coming with impenetrable defensive tech) that allows me to both reveal the presence of the complex and maintain some kind of involvement. I’d be pushed aside or killed or imprisoned almost immediately.
Stargates-rich.
You are correct.
I should have said that we have destroyed one ecosystem.
Planet Earth will get along just fine without humans.
Depends: Would you also be a foot taller or more after the discovery? 
Relevant thread: Physical Changes - Would You Be Suspicious? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
AHeinrich, dude (which is intended to cover both genders):
You signed up this month and have started a whole bunch of speculative threads: this one, the physical appearance thread, a re-birthing/DNA thread…
All interesting - do you have an overall…“agenda”? Or are you more like our own Skald the Rhymer who focuses on hypothetical situations across a wide variety of situations…
So - are you our Techno-Skald??
We haven’t destroyed our ecosystem either. My cite is the fact that humanity is not currenty extinct.
Yes! Just think, every religion in the World would have its own planet to screw up!
And leave the rest of us alone.
(Unless they had their own Star-Gate)
How do you think they got to the new planet in the first place?