On 2 Jul 2001, at 14:20, Dan Minette wrote:
> > On 2 Jul 2001, at 11:15, Dan Minette wrote:
> >
> > > I'll agree that firing the waste into the sun is not practical,
> > > and should not be considered as a potential solution.
> >
> > Why not? We're talking about the less than 1% of the waste which be
> > radioactive for thousands of years...
> >
>
> There are a few problems that I see.
>
> First, which radioactive isotopes are you thinking about. I know of
> very long lived ones, like uranium(>1 billion year half life), and
> middling lived ones, like cesium (30 year half life IIRC), and maybe
> americium at 200 years. But, I don't know of any isotopes offhand
> that have half lives in the thousands of years.
I din't have the study I read right here. It was the most active
elements from the fuel rods themselves though.
> Second, the risk of the space plane crashing will be higher than the
> risk of leakage from a salt mine.
Salt Domes? Any IDEA how expensive buring waste under them is.
Monitoring them for thousands of years...nah. Let's get RID of the
worst problems for good! And yes, we'd have to have a system with
a proven saftey record before we started launching.
> Third the amount of reptatively redundant safety measures that can be
> purchased with the cost of putting something into the sun is
> overwhelming.
Deep burial has massive ongoing costs with monitoring, and you
have to consider the political aspects as well...ongoing costs there
as well. And let's face it...firing a little radioactive waste into the
sun isn't about to hurt it...
Andy
Dawn Falcon
