Decontaminating nuclear radioactivity.

[Blue Maverick]

Would it be energy efficient? That's a lot of fuel power being used to first generate the reaction and then eject it at post orbital escape velocity. You couldn't fire it into orbit as the orbit would decay long before it stopped being hazardous.

You wouldnt keep it in orbit just fire it into space towards the sun, in regard the weight didn’t realise there was so much buy im sure as we advance those costs of getting it up and way would drop, not in our lifetime obviously.

 

[aguero93:20]

You wouldnt keep it in orbit just fire it into space towards the sun, in regard the weight didn’t realise there was so much buy im sure as we advance those costs of getting it up and way would drop, not in our lifetime obviously.

That's what I mean, it takes a lot more fuel to get it out of and through the orbital zone than simply into orbit.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

You wouldnt keep it in orbit just fire it into space towards the sun, in regard the weight didn’t realise there was so much buy im sure as we advance those costs of getting it up and way would drop, not in our lifetime obviously.

It would be prohibitively expensive. The fuel required would be enormous to free it of Earth’s gravity.

 

[inbetween]

I hear the argument that the production of nuclear energy is both efficient and clean. However you dress it up the fact that we are faced with these two disasters surely outweighs any of the benefits of production? Not only the environmental impact but the sheer costs involved in trying to make these areas less-harmful. Japan pre-Fukushima had a burgeoning nuclear power production program but now only 6% of its energy comes from nuclear sources. 6% too much in my opinion.

Both of those disasters could of been prevented and that is the unfortunate truth. That statement more than proves how safe nuclear energy is or can be.

Now on the flipside we cannot prevent or mitigate the environmental damage caused by burning coal or natural gas which arguably has caused far more environmental damage over the years.

The one alternative is renewables but we don't know just yet if renewables can raise enough capacity to cope with both the total amount of energy we need plus the rate that need is increasing per year. As of today 50% of UK power generation still comes from nuclear or burning gas, the rest is renewables.

 

[inbetween]

It’s far too heavy and there is already 400,000 tons of it worldwide.
The average payload of a space rocket is 14 tons. That is to to deliver at the height of the ISS. To get into interstellar space where it would not be dragged back it would have to be a lot less, or a much bigger rocket.
Allowing 14 tons per rocket, one rocket a day it would take 4000 weeks or 80 years to get rid of current waste.
And imagine a Challenger type disaster of a ship full of nuclear waste raining down!

There's just no need for this either when a cheaper and effective alternative is to dig a very big hole and stick it all in there.

I believe some countries are considering building massive nuclear waste dumps where other countries could buy space in them.

It sounds awful but actually it's an incredibly good idea. Nuclear waste placed in a safe place is not dangerous.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The trouble with deep burial of nuclear waste is that some of it will be lethal for a quarter of a million years. These are geological time scales.

Spent Nuclear Fuel: A Trash Heap Deadly for 250,000 Years or a Renewable Energy Source?

Nuclear waste is either a millennia's worth of lethal garbage or the fuel of future nuclear reactors--or both

www.scientificamerican.com

The shortish (<30 year) half-life stuff is not so much of an issue as that will all be "gone" in less than 1,000 years. And 1,000 years of safe storage if encapsulated in glass and buried deep underground would be very achievable.

The problem is the long half-life stuff, like Plutonium and Iodine-129. These, unless otherwise dealt with, will be with us for many, many millennia. But there is hope. Scientists are looking at potential processes which could break these down into more readily fissile materials with much shorter half-lives, which could then be treated and stored as above.

A fast reactor system to shorten the lifetime of long-lived fission products

Researchers have proposed a more efficient method to reduce radioactive waste. The study involves converting radioactive material into short-lived nuclides by absorbing surplus neutrons in the core peripheral portion of a small fast reactor faster than they are generated in the core, thus...

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[feelymcfeel]

I hear the argument that the production of nuclear energy is both efficient and clean. However you dress it up the fact that we are faced with these two disasters surely outweighs any of the benefits of production? Not only the environmental impact but the sheer costs involved in trying to make these areas less-harmful. Japan pre-Fukushima had a burgeoning nuclear power production program but now only 6% of its energy comes from nuclear sources. 6% too much in my opinion.

6% is not enough. What is your alternative solution?

The problem nuclear power has is the stigma surrounding it, not the process, efficiency, cleanliness of the energy. Let's have a look at the major nuclear disasters:

3 Mile Island - human error
Chernobyl - human error
Fukushima - earthquake

Given sufficient training, you can absolutely minimise any risk of human error, and good luck trying to protect against acts of god.

Burning coal, oil, and gas is worse for the environment by orders of magnitude, and renewable sources aren't currently scalable enough to power everything. Nuclear is for me the sensible option.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

There's just no need for this either when a cheaper and effective alternative is to dig a very big hole and stick it all in there.

I believe some countries are considering building massive nuclear waste dumps where other countries could buy space in them.

It sounds awful but actually it's an incredibly good idea. Nuclear waste placed in a safe place is not dangerous.

It isn’t a good idea.
Some of the waste needs burying safely for a quarter of a million years.
That’s geological time frames where you just cannot predict the security of the site will not change.
No EU countries are planning on taking anyone else’s nuclear waste - its illegal. Every country has to sort out its own nuclear waste storage and disposal.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Given sufficient training, you can absolutely minimise any risk of human error, and good luck trying to protect against acts of god.

In theory that can happen, but you've got to look at what usually happens in reality. The reality of running any business is one of corner cutting, lobbying for laxer regulations, and refusal to spend money on safety. Governments are frequently more concerned with remaining in power than anything else and, as we saw in Chernobyl or most recently in Wuhan, will downplay or outright deny failings if it's going to give the impression of incompetence even at the expense of thousands of lives.

People blame Fukushima on a natural disaster (as if a tsunami off the coast of Japan is an unexpected thing) but in reality there were a catalogue of errors that contributed to the disaster. In 1991, there was a flood in one of the generators caused by a burst pipe, after which an engineer warned against the possibility of a tsunami causing similar flooding. In 2000, a study commissioned by the plant owners recommended improved sea defences to protect the plant in case of a tsunami. In 2008 a study yet again recommended improving sea defences, and was ignored as an unrealistic threat. In 2011, a tsunami happened, flooded the reactor and caused a meltdown. This is the reality of a profit-motivated company being put in charge of anything. And if one of those things is something that can potentially make an area unlivable for thousands of years, then you need extremely strict regulations.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

The big thing is that nuclear energy is going to be available for a long time.

Petrochemicals/coal are going to run out at some point, and are environmentally difficult because of the carbon dioxide produced.
Renewables can't cover everything that it needed.
Something needs to fill the gap.

Some places won't run them - building them near earthquake zones is obviously a risk, but there have been very few incidents - as noted by @I'm With Stupid. This is the biggest risk with nuclear energy - bad practice.
Three Mile Island was 40 years ago, and there have been the two notable ones of Chernobyl/Fukushima since (plus one somewhere in deepest Siberia which isn't as well-known). If the plants are maintained properly, there is a very low risk; the trade-off is that when that risk happens, the loss is potentially huge.