Question

Nuclear disarmament should result in the retrieval of large amounts of plutonium from nuclear weapons that are being destroyed. Suggest one method for disposing of this plutonium and one method for repurposing this material. Some people have suggested that radioactive waste should be shot to the sun or outer space. List two reasons that this is not an attractive disposal method.

Answer 1

There are several methods to dispose of nuclear waste. However all methods have certain advantages and disadvantages.

We cannot use storage containers to dispose plutonium because of its great half life of around 24000 years. We can bury it deep down but it has been proved dangerous . Plutonium can be used to power the reactors but it is a lot more expensive then we think. It is better to dispose off plutonium in water ponds and make use as needed.

Why disposing nuclear waste in space is not a good option ?????

It would be too costly, but there is a bigger reason not to launch nuclear waste into space: safety. The failure rate may be good enough when the only lives at stake are those who willingly went aboard, but when there is a chance that an explosion in the atmosphere will disperse nuclear waste over a wide area, the failure rate must be much, much lower.

It would be a very, very, very bad idea to leave nuclear waste in LEO, so you would actually need to blast it off to deep space. This is exponentially more expensive.

Further, if we balst it into space, the material may make an orbit around earth which will affect the incomping sunlight and may enter earth's atmosphere because of high half life