There has been a process for a decade which involces heating the low level waste to a certain high temperature thus creating industrial gases and eliminating the radioactivity. Though my memory is falible and my knowledge of the technolgy is poor, a company called Molten Metal Technology tried to expand on this technology but they were hampered by mismanagement. Can’t this technology still be used and eliminate the need for waste sites?
First the article.
First the article.
NickFun, that idea sounds like a con job.
If you heat an element (say plutonium) to a high temperature it is still that element. It may react with other elements (oxidation) but the original element still exists.
I’m in the biz and have had some strange people corner me (usually at family reunions) wanting to hear what I think about this idea for eliminating nuclear waste.
You can get rid of an element by “burning” (really transmutation) it in a reactor. There is research underway to do this to spent fuel. The problem is mainly political since this involves some reprocessing. You, of course, still get radioactive stuff out of the reactor after you have “burned” your waste but you do manage to get rid of a lot of the problem isotopes and reduce your high-level storage needs.
For low level waste nobody seriously considers doing this—it wouldn’t be worth the effort. You may be thinking of an incineration process: Burn the (combustible) low level waste and filter the contamination out of the waste gasses. This reduces the volume of the waste but does not eliminate it.
There were plans to do this as well but it was shot down in court.
OK get ready for a major over-simplification:
Why can’t we just pack up the stuff and space shuttle it to a planet of our choosing and use that planet for the worlds nuclear dump site? There is no life on them anyway. Just so long as there is sufficient gravity to hold the drums there. 
Because it would be an insane waste of energy and if anything went wrong you’d get radioactive waste scattered across our atmosphere?
And you’re supposed to suggest using the waste as fuel to list the spaceship into orbit where it will ‘just fall into the sun’
WIPP is open and receiving LLW. All HLW is supposed to go to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The only planet the shuttle can get to is, well, you’re sitting on it.
In response to the questioner’s comment about solar and wind power, I was suprised that Cecil didn’t mention the relatively low amount of energy that is currently generated by those methods.
<< Why can’t we just pack up the stuff and space shuttle it to a planet of our choosing >>
The more common thought (Cecil’s mail must get it every two weeks) is why not just shoot it into the sun? The answer is still the same: cost. Very few of us would be willing to see our tax bills double (I haven’t tried to estimate the real costs) for this worthwhile project. (And note the risks if something goes wrong and the thing falls back to earth.)
Well, we could try sending it down into the center of the earth (which <a href=http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001082.html>may be predominately plutonium anyway</a>), but I think sending it rocketing toward the sun would be easier.
The Barnwell. SC site is only accepting waste from the Atlantic Compact states (not to be confused with the Atlantic Coast Conference) made up of SC, NJ and CT. A few years ago, Barnwell began to make waste burial extremely expensive, thus prompting waste generators to reduce their output. Some innovative companies have begun incineration where a large amount of waste material is burned at high temperatures and leaves only a small amount of residual material. This reduces the volume by about 100 to 1. About 10 years ago here in CT, the state undertook the task to find an instate burial site. NIMBY!!!
was the result.
Radioactive waste disposal is NOT a technical problem. It is purely a political one. I’m beginning to think that Cecil is a nuclear engineer. So far, his answers on this topic have been right on the money.
No, he just knows a few.
I’m sure that Dex already knows this, but the Sun is literally the most difficult place in the Universe to send a payload. It would take significantly less energy to send waste into alpha Centauri, or the Andromeda Galaxy. Mind you, it would still be a prohibitively expensive proposition to send it anywhere in space, but the Sun is the worst place at all.
What about the core of our galaxy? Wouldn’t that be harder?
Is this because the spacecraft could use gravitational slingshots to increase its velocity? To reach the Sun, would using reverse slingshots around Venus and/or Mercury make any great difference?
So it would be easier just to crash the stuff into one of the Moon’s maria. It would take thousands of years before anyone would see a change from Earth.
Still a bad idea, of course.
Hm, might be… What’s the Sun’s orbital speed around the core?
rowrrbazzle, the problem is that to get to the Sun, you have to kill all of an object’s orbital velocity, whereas to send things to Parts Beyond, you just need to boost it up to escape speed. And if you do the math, for an object starting in a circular orbit, the former requires over twice the change of speed as the latter. This is neglecting the effects of all slingshots, because the calculations for those can get hairy very quickly.
We are orbiting the Galactic center at a distance of 28,000 LY with a velocity of 250 km/s.
“Well, we could try sending it down into the center of the earth (which <a href=http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001082.html>may be predominately plutonium anyway</a> ), but I think sending it rocketing toward the sun would be easier.”
I don’t think the centre of the earth is ‘predominantly’ plutonium, but it’s a good place for high and intermediate level waste. There used to be a proposal to drop waste into subduction zones using seabed penetrators - thus saving the need to drill. What became of that idea?
And if you want to hit galactic centre (and the big black hole there?), you will need to work out a way to avoid the other matter on the way there.