[Iain Robertson]:
The cost of space launches is still prohibitively high – and is still the biggest polluter of the upper atmosphere (solid rocket fuel, specifically, is a rather effective greenhouse gas & acid rain catalyst). To launch the many tonnes of nuclear fuel skyward would cost both financially and environmentally.

Vitrification (embedding the waste in an inert silica material with a decomposition half-life twice that of the stored material) and burial of this waste at selected sites is still the preferred method; it prevents alpha & beta contamination, and limits gamma contamination.

Ironically, nuclear power is actually a cleaner form of power – both in radiation produced and in conventional environmental damage – than coal fired power stations. I’ll have to find the reference for that, but effectively it comes from the fact that the various radioactive carbon isotopes are released by the tonne into the atmosphere, while carefully controlled uranium and plutonium installations release virtually (by comparison) zero radiation per supplied watthour. The difference, of course, is the concentration of radiation, and the much, much higher immediate risk posed by thermonuclear installations (notwithstanding the massive cleanup problem when a station’s decommissioned after forty-odd years of operation!).

-Iain
[Posted by Brooke Smith for Iain Robertson 21/10/03]

Just read this article about Toshiba trying to sell a small & cheap nuclear reactor to be used in the Alaskan Wilderness. From
core plexus writes "This article describes a proposal from a Japanese corporation that wants to thrust the Interior Alaska community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years. There's a catch, of course. It's a nuclear reactor. Not a huge, Three Mile Island-type power plant but a new generation of small nuclear reactor about the size of a big spruce tree. Designers say the technology is safe, simple and cheap enough to replace diesel-fired generators as the primary energy source for villages across rural Alaska."

[Joanne Schoenwald 23/10/03]
I come from a model of total ‘idealism’. So what I am saying here comes from my ideal world. I understand that we will never achieve the ideal, but if we aim for it, we might get close to it.

I am not a fan of ‘space dumping’. I think it somehow lulls people into a false sense of relief and creates an ‘out of mind out of sight’ mentality. Space is not our wasteland. Just as the ocean is not our wasteland. Launching waste into outer space is fraught with unknown results, just as the danger with genetic modification is largely due to the ‘unknown’. So many things have been done in the past that were thought to be good ideas, but turned into catastrophes – like the cane toad.

I am not necessarily advocating that we dump nuclear waste here on earth. What I am saying, is that we have to take responsibility and consequences for our actions. And at all times we should avoid an either/or option. That is, I would advocate avoiding a situation where we say, “we either have to dump this nuclear waste on earth or in space”. I would like us to say, what other methods of energy production do we have at our disposal that produce even less hazardous waste?
[Posted by Brooke Smith for Joanne Schoenwald]

My understanding is that most newer designs produced almost no nuclear waste.

please, no space launch of nuclear waste. one exploding rocket could dump nuclear waste all over.