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by bell-cot
444 days ago
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By "space" do you mean low earth orbit - where the stuff will reenter the atmosphere within (say) a century? Or geosync orbit - where it'll stay up there forever-ish...but ain't actually gone? Or actually gone, like (say) Mars? IIR, the current rock-bottom (Falcon 9) launch prices are something like $1,000/lbs. to low earth orbit, $2,500/lbs. to geosync, and $6,500/lbs. to Venus. A quick Google says the US has about 88,000 tons of radioactive waste. So - 88,000 tons = 176,000,000 lbs. = $176,000,000,000 just to put it in low earth orbit. And something like 4,600 Falcon 9 launches. (Some fraction of which would doubtless go badly wrong, spreading radioactive stuff all over the landscape.) In short - it's a cool-sounding idea. But neither the numbers nor the politics are remotely near viable. |
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