Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Nuclear Waste in Space?

AuteurJon. Coopersmith, Space Review
6-01-5-59-05.pdf
Datumaugustus 2005
Classificatie 6.01.5.59/05 (AFVAL - REST 'OPLOSSINGEN')
Voorkant

Uit de publicatie:

The Space Review.
Essays and commentary about the final frontier (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/437/2)


Nuclear waste in space?
by Jonathan Coopersmith
Monday, August 22, 2005




Laser launch systems could provide low-cost space access and also
resolve the growing problem of nuclear waste. (credit: LLNL)

When I fly from Texas to Europe, I pay $3–6 a pound, depending on how well I do buying a ticket.
When a satellite or shuttle is launched into space, the customer (or taxpayer) pays over $10,000 a
pound. That is the major challenge of space flight: until the cost of going into space drastically
decreases, the large-scale exploration and exploitation of space will not occur.
The world currently sends approximately 200 tons of payloads, the equivalent of two 747 freighter
flights, into space annually. At $50–500 million a launch, very few cargoes can justify their cost.
We have here the classic chicken-and-egg situation. As long as space flight remains very expensive,
payloads will be small. As long as payloads remain small, rockets will be expensive.
If annual demand were 5,000 tons instead of 200, the equation would shift. Engineers would have
the incentive to design more efficient launch systems. Large, guaranteed payloads could
significantly reduce the cost of reaching orbit, ushering in a new, affordable era in space for
governments, businesses, universities, and, hopefully, individuals.
Where would this much new cargo come from? Fortunately, there is an answer. Unfortunately, it’s
not intuitively attractive, at least at first glance: it’s high-level nuclear waste, the 45,000 tons and
380,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive spent fuel and process waste and detritus (as
opposed to the more abundant but far less dangerous and shorter-lived low-level waste) from six
decades of nuclear weapons programs and civilian power plants.
There are three good reasons to send nuclear waste into space. First, it is safe. Second, space
disposal is better than the alternative, un