Scott Lurndal wrote:

"George" writes:

"lgb" wrote in message
. ..
In article ,


And that's not even considering the waste disposal problem. All
industry has such a good record at cleaning up after itself :-).

Probably would help if they had a place to put it.



First off, the waste problem is greatly exagerated. Using reprocessing,
the waste can be turned into useful reactor fuel. The problems with
reprocessing are political, not technical.

The waste is not really waste, anyway. It is a collection of isotopes,
many of which are radioactive at various levels. Generally the level
of radioactivity is inversely coorelated to the length of the half-life,
i.e. isotopes with a longer half-life have relatively low radioactivity.

After extracting the useful isotopes (cesium, etc for medical uses, et.
al.),
the remainder can be reprocessed into useful fuel. The quite small amount
left after reprocessing can be easily sequestered in Yucca mountain or a
salt mine in Kansas until mankind finds a use for it.

Anyone who seriously believes that sequestration for 10000 years is
required doesn't understand the progress of technology. Only 100
years ago, there were no uses for Uranium, and Plutonium was basically
unknown (being man-made :-), I fully expect that mankind will find uses
for the remaining relatively low-level, long half-life waste long before
10000 years elapses, if nothing else, for low-power, long lasting RTG
devices.

It would be quite foolish to dispose of the waste in some fashion where
we cannot get to it in the near future (as some wags have suggested
shooting into the sun - a suggestion that also evidences a lack of
understanding of orbital mechanics).

Perhaps using nuclear rockets? An Orion could put quite a lot of nuclear
waste into the sun in a single go eg.

scott

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