How deep in the earth would you have to bury nuclear waste, even in the ocean? Would any container technology today be able to withstand the pressure? It seems to me that a better alternative would be to send the nuclear waste into space, specifically into the Sun, which is already has nuclear activity and would not affect generations to come.

I'm for space as well. Pick a direction, any direction, blast it off and never think about it again. I admit that the idea of us polluting the entire universe is _conceptually_ abhorrent, but on the cosmic scale, this waste of ours is utterly infinitessimal.

Sorry for the delayed response.

There are two reasons I don't think we should pursue nuclear waste disposal in space.

First, there's too great a risk that the launch will fail, causing the dispersal of the waste into the environment. While marginal, the risk is great enough to cause some individuals and organizations to campaign against it in ways that bring attention to the nature of nuclear waste, and its potential effect on the environment.

Second, reintroduction of the nuclear material into the Earth's mantle will help keep the molten rock from solidifying.

As for concerns about the containter withstanding the pressure...it doesn't really have to. Once the container reaches a point where it will continue to sink deeper into the mantle, it doesn't matter what happens. If the material melts, so much the better. As I understand it, molten Uranium and Plutonium is much more dense than the Earth's mantle or core, and so will continue to sink.

The only disadvantage I can think of is that the material will no longer be available should we develop ways to get more energy out of "spent" nuclear fuel.

Space disposal could be viable if you used rail-launching technology, with rockets it's out of the question.

I'll double on Mikes' last though, our "spent" nuclear fuel is only 1% burned.

Recycle all uranium, transuranics and long lived fission products into new fuel and bring online molten salt reactors and fast breeders for maximum utilisation.Results: waste that will be less active than fresh uranium ore within decades rather than millennia.

Did we not learn from our mistakes in the past??? Why in the heck would we want to throw our waste into space, when this person here has a perfectly good idea about how to destroy it without really harming the environment. As far as reaching the seafloor, why not... we can do it to build bridges and what not as well as tethering offshore drilling rigs. So why not just toss the muck into the great abyss and let nature do what it does best.

Tossing the stuff into space will just cause problems down the line. Remember they thought landfills were a good idea once upon a time. "Out of sight, out of mind" isnt a good idea IMO, why not let it go "back to where it came from"???

Did we not learn from our mistakes in the past??? Why in the heck would we want to throw our waste into space, when this person here has a perfectly good idea about how to destroy it without really harming the environment. As far as reaching the seafloor, why not... we can do it to build bridges and what not as well as tethering offshore drilling rigs. So why not just toss the muck into the great abyss and let nature do what it does best.

Tossing the stuff into space will just cause problems down the line. Remember they thought landfills were a good idea once upon a time. "Out of sight, out of mind" isnt a good idea IMO, why not let it go "back to where it came from"???

putting it at the bottom of the ocean would be a sure way to create a sea monster

D:

space is the way to go...it wouldnt even have to be that expensive...just blast a copule million tons anywhere; just make sure it clears earths gravitation pull.

Mike this is a great idea. Originally I was more inclined to jettison it toward the sun since the sun's gravitational pull would require we get it less than the distance of the moon before the sun took it straight in gravitationally. I think we could build adequate redundancy into the system to ensure no launch failures. However, our extended experience with oil well drilling convinces me your idea is simpler. Drill the hole, insert the container with the spend nuclear rods, bury the hole and let nature do her thing. Brilliant.

Actually, you don't even have to drill a hole. Years ago, engineers studied many different strategies to dispose of nuclear waste. One method was to put the waste into heavy steel containers shaped like aerial bombs, complete with tail fins. These would be taken by ship out to appropriate locations and dropped into the ocean. The containers will fall point first through the water at surprisingly high speeds. When they hit the ocean floor, they will bury themselves hundreds of feet under the ground.

It won't matter if they leak eventually. The most dangerous radioisotopes are heavy and will tend to sink deeper into the earth rather than rise up. Even if some of the radioactive material escapes up into the water it really won't pose any threat to anything. The ocean floor is already covered with radioactive elements that are continuously spewed out of volcanic vents in places like the mid-atlantic trench. So the organisms on the sea floor are always exposed to radioactive material anyway. They must have already evolved a high tolerance to it.

I have had this idea for a couple of years now. It seemed to me that other rational thinking people would also be thinking along these lines. We know with relative certainty that the earth's crust is ever moving and one plate goes under the other at several points on the globe. This radioactive material can be isolated into a concrete type vessle and that will sheild the material long enough to become embedded into the ocean floor. In time the vessle will sink deep enough to be caught in the sweeping motion of the plates and be pulled towards the core. Even if the vessle degrades over the course of several decades it will be long past any point of return due to the density of nuclear material. it will also be so dep that it would not pose any threat to life on the ocean floor. The earths mantle would consume and disperse the material to the point of obscurity. Nothing we know of or have made can survive the heat and pressure generated by the core of the earth. The material came from the earth in the beginning. It would pose no problem returning it there. Sending the material into space is too costly and too unpredictable as to the reaction of other elements. the inadvertant asteroid strike could interupt the flight to the sun. This could just result in transferring the problem to some other place. Wheras sending it to the earth's core is not so far removed to a kindrid environment for it anyway. Just my opinion. I have given this alot of thought and still ponder the project.

I forgot to mention that the only reason the engineers abandoned the "bomb" method I described above was because international treaties outlawed disposing of nuclear waste at sea. A classic case of environmental protection backfiring. Being unable to dispose of the waste at sea, we are forced to dispose of it on land, where it is a far greater hazard.

You can just use fusion to destroy nuclear waste, it is said bu the institute for fusion and Department of Physics.