Reply #10: Incinerating a container in orbit

[izquierdista]

There was much angst when the Voyager probes were launched because of the Pu-238 heat source contained in the probe. It is the only way to engineer a battery with a life of decades, but if it were to vaporize in the atmosphere, uh-oh. That much volatilized Pu could raise the rate of cancers by the millions.

However, NASA went ahead, there was no Challenger type accident, and the probes are now in the far reaches of the solar system. I often think that people here on DU are overly fearful of nuclear waste. The geologic solution, to put it thousands of feet down in a stable geologic formation is a pretty good one. There are naturally occurring deposits of radioactive material, even a naturally occurring nuclear reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor). The geologic solutions don't depend on the containers. It is assumed that the container will be crushed and breached in a few years after the repository is closed. Then the formation is what contains the radioactive material until it decays to stable elements.