Nuclear Waste in Space

Why Shooting Nuclear Waste into Space is a Terrible Idea

• Nuclear waste comes in three broad levels: low, intermediate, and high-level waste.
• High-level nuclear waste is very concentrated and is made up of spent fuel taken out of a reactor core, which is highly radioactive.
• Around 440 active nuclear reactors create approximately 11,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste each year, and since 1954, we have accumulated 400,000 tons of dangerous radioactive waste.
• Launching nuclear waste into space is an extremely expensive process, with launching one reactor's worth of nuclear waste costing at least $100 million per year.
• Currently, there aren't enough rockets to shoot all the nuclear waste into space, and we would need to create entirely new space industries to keep up with the demand for giant toxic space trash trucks.
• Littering the space around Earth with thousands of casts of spent nuclear fuel would be a nightmare for space junk management and satellite collision avoidance.
• To launch nuclear waste deep into space, we would need even bigger rockets that would be even more expensive.
• Rockets carrying high-level radioactive waste have a higher chance of failure, and each failure would be equivalent to a miniature nuclear explosion.
• The fear of nuclear waste and horrible ideas like shooting it into space reveal how bad we are at understanding risk.
• The largest amounts of radioactive elements like uranium and radon are released by coal burning, which leaves ash as a waste product that includes about 36,000 tons of radioactive materials.
• While nuclear energy is flawed, and its current form may only be a transitory technology, nuclear power plants are a harder sell than coal.
• There are good methods to handle nuclear waste, like burying it deep underground or reprocessing some of it into new fuel, but shooting it into space is one of the worst ideas ever.