Can We Dispose of Radioactive Waste in Volcanoes?

Burying the waste in a subduction zone however should give you the opposite effect, although a bit slower. As the subsiding plate slides under it's neighbor and downward into the planet it will carry the nuclear waste with it. All radioactive ores bubbled up from within the planet once, all we'd be doing is returning it.

Uh...hello? Why don't we get Superman to throw it into the sun?

That worked in the past, it can work again now.

How about using the RHIC to melt all that crap? I heard it reached temperatures of 7.2 trillion degrees F. I reckon that is hot enough to make plasma gluon soup, or something like that, right?

We can melt all that nuclear waste a few molecules at a time using RHIC. It'll take time, but it's gonna be worth it!

I have been saying this for years. Why can't all our rubbish be disposed of in this way? I believe it could provide a very suitable way of cleaning up the planet we seem so keen to distroy.

They should contract with Virgin who just entered the space game and make Virgin Galactic Disposal Company - they haul the stuff up into space and just give it a nudge toward the sun!

Or we could reprocess the waste and reuse it till it becomes lead.

Wow, retarded articles like this remind me why I dropped my subscription after having it for many years. You took something that seemed like a bad idea, acted like it there might be some reason for you to mention it then say no, it really was a terrible idea...

why not dump all nuke waste material into the the sun, pile it up to collection depot out int the orbit, when the the collection depot is full, haul it out or push it all the way to the sun for recyling....no brainer.... the first grader can solve it....

Is Thermite a viable option?

The reason it sounds so simple that a first grader could solve it is because it is one of the worst ideas possible. Did you ever consider that vehicles flying into space sometimes explode? What happens to the nuclear material then?

The proper solution isn't to dispose of it but to keep it in a safe place. Let a future, more advanced civilization find a good use for it. I'm sure they'll thank us when they see we didn't just throw it away.

Let Obama figure it out...he seems to think he has a solution for EVERYTHING!!! (DUH)

then if you can not protect it from explosion, you have not reach your first grader talent yet.... no offense... but its so true...

i hope all you "dump it into teh sun" people are joking...

we all read the "29,000 tons" part, right? and that's just the fuel rods...

as for subduction zones, they move extremely slowly and are also prone to earthquakes. it could work in theory, if you don't mind a couple thousand years of radiation poisoning.

if useless spirit who got stuck in mars that is 93 million miles away from sun reach it, why not a vessel full of nuke waste that is 130 million miles away from sun cannot reach it?
It's because the country that posessed nukes don't care at all... the hypocrite don't want to deal with their mess...plain and simple....

Its a collective problem.. not just a problem one country has to deal with. Those countries who dont have nukes want it... and those who have it already want more of it. No simple solution to this problem.

Subduction zone comment is the most sensible. I'd offer mid-ocean ridges as an alternative.

But the common point here is water for transportation and shielding. There's no better and more controlled way to move the waste than over water. And there's no better method for delivery to final site than in a bomb-shaped ceramic lozenge that can guide itself straight into the subduction trench or mid-ocean ridge.

bokyo74

If you cannot speak in coherent phrases, please don't make fun of people not being smarter than 1st graders. Really, your second post made absolutely no sense. I still don't have an idea of what you're talking about.

A new method of getting rid of radioactive waste would be to teleport it into space toward the sun where it would burn up in the high temperature gases. It is possible using negative energy to open up a wormhole between space and hyperspace. Because the speed of light in hyperspace is just 1 meter/second, compared to 299792458 m/s in this dimension, the power of any wave traveling through the wormhole into hyperspace is magnified enormously. This pulsed wave can then launch the nuclear waste so as to come back into dimension at a point close to the sun. We could also get rid of medical waste, chemical waste and garbage as well with this technology.

theres 29 000 tons of it people!!
do you have any idea what it costs to send something into earths orbit? never mind anywhere close to the sun.
who the hell is going to pay that? i dont even think that theres enough money on this planet to do that.

We get nuclear energy from uranium-235 which is 1% of the Uranium. The other 99% is Uranium-238 which is considered "waste". IF that is what we're trying to get rid of, I think it's a stupid idea because Uranium-238 can also be used as nuclear fuel. Why are we dumping it all? If I were in charge, I would not waste it.

That so-called waste is still as radioactive as it is because its still 'fuel' It just needs to be reprocessed again. The random crap that gets irradiated due to inefficiencies in reactor design, that can be called waste (pipes, impurities in the water, etc). Its period of radioactivity is much much less (thousands or tens of thousands of years vs.. hundreds of thousands? millions?) because it is not inherently radioactive, just became that way due to exposure. The argument is more a political one than an engineering one. If the 'waste' were to be reprocessed, it would essentially remove the limitation of nuclear fuel, and thus, solve the energy crisis. The solution for storage is natural salt deposits like the ones in the south-eastern United States, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. These are geologic formations that are probably some of the most stable on the planet, with over 250million years of geologic stability. Much much longer than the radioactivity of even the fuel-waste, let alone the by-product waste, yet we store oil there instead. Look at Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, PopSci did a great intro piece about this on page 40 of the August 2001 issue (free via Google books). Also check out Wired's coverage of Thorium fluoride reactors in the January 2010 issue (title: Uranium is So Last Century - Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke). This not only doesn't produce the waste, but it also solves the problem of meltdown, fuel-for-bombs issue, as well as solves the fuel availability issue (as thorium is everywhere) and, if combined with newer technologies, can even provide the energy to reradiate the already existing 'waste.' if going that route is better than reprocessing and longterm storage. Volcanoes never seemed like a good idea.

Why not just use thorium? A lot less nuclear waste, a lot more of it, produces more power, and just about no risk of nuclear meltdown. And the waste is gone faster. The only problem is you can't really make a nuclear bomb from it.

Using Thorium is a Fantastic Idea. Let me add that Throwing away radioactive "Waste" is SUPER STUPID.

It will be like throwing away Scrap Metal, instead of recycling it.

There are at least 2 new types of Nuclear Power that can Re-Use the old Uranium waste AS FUEL. That means you don't have to do any more mining, NONE. And Guess what, Thorium Nuclear plants can be fed the said Waste, and they reduce it to almost nothing, what little waste remains stays dangerous for no more than 500 yrs.

Why would we want to throw away such valuable resource?

PBO

:) Why not just turn it back into Weapons and sell it to the highest bidder.. that will solve our problem of debt too!

I fear a miscalculation with the vulcano could mean a mass-ejection of the radioactive kind!

I just hoping most of these suggestions were made in fun 'Teleport'is the daftest idea ever.

Reprocess what we can, mix the solid waste with molten glass and dump it into a subduction zone. It may be slow but radioactive waste takes a long time to decay anyway.

All talk of alternative energy is pointless. Oil companies are going to make sure we burn every last drop of petrol on the planet at increasing costs and to hell with the enviromental impacts because they'll be dead by then. .

Why not store it on the moon?

"Using Thorium is a Fantastic Idea. Let me add that Throwing away radioactive "Waste" is SUPER STUPID.

It will be like throwing away Scrap Metal, instead of recycling it.

There are at least 2 new types of Nuclear Power that can Re-Use the old Uranium waste AS FUEL. That means you don't have to do any more mining, NONE. And Guess what, Thorium Nuclear plants can be fed the said Waste, and they reduce it to almost nothing, what little waste remains stays dangerous for no more than 500 yrs.

Why would we want to throw away such valuable resource?

PBO"

This sounds like a good idea, so why don't they do it then?

Some people don't really seem to understand.

Think of it like a rubber band ball (apologies for lack of a better analogy). Each time you remove a rubber band from a rubber band ball and fling it away somewhere, the ball reduces very slightly in size. Slowly, but surely, the rubber band ball will be no more than scattered rubber bands if you keep subtracting from it. Respectively, we'll throw everything that's "useless" from earth into space somewhere, and make it someone/something else's problem. The problem now, is we've depleted our resources and a good amount of the earth's mass and launched it at the sun. Throwing our garbage into space somewhere is only taking the material from which the earth is made up of, and scattering elsewhere (rubber band ball ?)

If we're going to use nuclear material, burn oil, and make things out of plastic, we may as well learn what to do with it the waste ourselves on this planet. Maybe, for a moment, a select few of us who make these decisions can act responsible and be held accountable, not our sons and grandsons...agreed?

Molten Metals, a publically traded company in the 80's, sold many shares to a poorly-informed public. One of their claims was that it could handle "nuclear waste" by destroying it in an incinerator made of heated, molten metals. It sounded a bit like a Bessemer process. It could, of course, incinerate ordinary trash, but no more efficiently than ordinary processes. Molten Metals was promoted by a certain politician who went on to profit greatly from the GlobalWarmingHoax. Google 'Molten Metals' and see a pump-and-dump scheme develop. Of course, nothing of the company exists today, but many of the players are doing very well in the government-industry grant money complex.

Vailhem, thanks for your comment. It was knowledgeable. I'm going to look up Thorium.

I like how some people at least explained the merits of an LFTR here. PopSci would do themselves well to do a good article on it. As it is, this article is just ill informed and goofy. BTW, 95% of nuclear waste is Uranium 238, which is mostly harmless. But the rest is Uranium 235 and Plutonium plus fission fragments. That stuff is mostly Strontium 90 and Cesium 137. There actually are industrial and medical uses for that stuff too. The only reason we are accumulating this stuff in such large quantities is because President Gerald Ford ordered suspension of reprocessing. Then President Jimmy Carter (Thank God we survived him) made it permanent. You could burn the Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239 in a Thorium reactor, get more energy from them and only end up with a small quantity of fission fragments that will be inert in a few centuries. Otherwise you'll have a deadly problem for hundreds of thousands of years.

Dumping nuclear waste in a volcano, I think it could be unnecessary in case of using an aneutronic reactor, because it does not produce radioactive wastes.
www.crossfirefusor.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor/overview.html

Clopay

By the time we run out of natural resources, shouldn't we be in space mining asteroids and the moon, and Mars and Venus and crap too?

Besides, asteroids fall to Earth all the time bringing new resources. Doesn't happen enough and in large enough quantities, but that's why we convert Big Oil companies into Big Asteroid Mining companies. Let them invest heavily in that crap because who else has the $$ to do it?

Sooner or later, we'll invent the technology to make stuff out of thin air and then it'll be a utopia and everyone will be happy. Or not.

I agree with 'larvaman' on this one...
www.design-laorosa.blogspot.com/2010/02/heres-idea.html

Plese note that the business about radioactive lava flows was entirely columnist's thought, not mine. In fact I think it's unlikely - what is more likely would be that the canisters could be regurgitated and compromised, exposing the encased radioactive material to the environment. Some of it could be entrained in a lava flow, but far worse, it could be transported by the geothermal/hydrothermal fluid system that surrounds ANY volcano, if not dissolved then possibly as particulates. Or surface meteoric water could carry it away into a river system.

As for the business about melting the material, there's no 'need' to melt the material, and indeed it's the last thing you would want since molten substances are more mobile than solid ones. Secondly, melting is rather pointless since it will not affect the radioactivity.

Oh, and runescape531 - I think the reason they choose a question like this to feature is because they think it will generate some interest. First gut-level reaction as a volcano scientist was 'wow, bad idea.' But it isn't the first time someone has proposed it, in fact I found several versions of it with a simple Google search.

As for the speculation of one comment above, tossing it down a subduction zone trench is probably not viable either. There is no evidence that it would ever get subducted. There are plenty of examples around the globe where the uppermost material of a subducting plate gets offscraped into an accretionary wedge, to be plastered onto the continental margin. We don't have any way to know where the disposed waste would end up.

It's true that most nuclear waste is very low-level stuff (contaminated gloves and such), but the small percentage that is spent fuel rods, which was my understanding of what we were discussing, does pose a problem. I am not a nuclear physicist nor an expert on reactors and fuel, so I cannot comment on any of the claims made here about reprocessing. But I can say volcanoes are a poor choice for a dumping ground.

Cleraly not a very good idea! I mean like really. Who comes up with this stuff?

Jess
www.true-privacy.es.tc

T'is an Ill wind that blows no minds...Clearly they were trolling for brainiacs...
Put into a volcano! What?
Teleport it into the Sun? Teleport?
The breeder reactor thing, perhaps, but the powers that be tend to take umbrage if any nation other than France builds breeder reactors, So we'd look real ethical building 'em ourselves...
Subduction zones perhaps, but then you have to design a container strong enough not to be smeared between two plates like nut butter.
My own attitude towards Nuclear power is that there is no place for it in an ecosystem. None on earth that is, I think nuclear power will be essential for the exploration and colonization of space. When we are colonizing the Moon and Mars, the outer moons of Jupiter, Titan and exploring Eris, the Oort Cloud and beyond, well then Nuclear power will be like Steam engines are to us today. In Space you have to shield from radiation anyway, so Nukes make perfect sense. And after all, is there Really any other good way to power massive ionic thrusters?
To the Universe and Beyond!

There are many holes in the theories posted above. Teleportation and space are out of the question. Disposing via volcano or subduction zone is not a viable option. Radioactive waste contaminates it's surroundings and unless you can break down the nuclei of any radioactive substance and render it inert the process of melting any of the waste on this planet is not going to happen. Then comes the question of throwing junk into or at the sun. The red tape surrounding those theories would require more intelligent souls than this thread has yet produced.

Turn the waste of the uranium in to fuel and keep storing the bi-product waste, that is being done. There are many sites that store our rods and the thermal power generated from those sites do produce power.

This is a multi faceted problem. What is to be done about the waste, and why is the current solution of storage not enough. What can be done about reducing the production of nuclear waste. Finally what problems are we creating for future generations and should we keep bickering about the right way to be proactive or should we just leave things alone.

Bokyo74, are you insane?!
The radioactive, SUPER-HEAVY elements will eventually fall into the centre of the sun. If I might remind you, a hypergiant star can collapse into itself from getting something as heavy as IRON in it's core. Imagine what it would do to our sun to dump stuff like thorium and radium into it.

You state in paragraph two "It takes temperatures that are tens of thousands of degrees hotter than that to split uranium’s atomic nuclei and alter its radioactivity to make it inert, Rowe says. What you need is a thermonuclear reaction, like an atomic bomb—not a great way to dispose of nuclear waste." You come close to an idea on how to dispose of the waste. Years ago it was discussed that one way to store water, or other mater, was to set off an atomic bomb miles below the surface creating a huge water tight round cavity. Now, put that together with the thought that it takes a thermonuclear reaction to dispose of the nuclear waste. First you set off the first bomb to create the tomb, then fill the tomb with waste then set off another bomb to burn the waste, and so on and so on.
Emmett Cunningham
Phoenix, AZ

The original plan for nuclear energy in the US included a cycle through a "breeder" reactor. I forget why it was cut, either politics or cost or both.

If we aren't going to recycle the "waste", we have to put it somewhere "safe". Where "safe" depends on the toxicity and half of the material.

If we don't want to entomb the material, the best place to put it is in the sun.

Unfeasible? Absolutely not! We have lobbed space craft everywhere in the solar system and beyond. Dropping a package into the sun is not that difficult.

Costly? Compared to what? How much has already been spent on a long term site in Utah or Nevada? How much is it costing utility companies to store spent fuel on site? This isn't a project that needs huge amounts of vehicle development, there are plenty already in existence that could do the job. There might even be some launch vehicles "available" at a discount to test the idea.

What about a bad launch that results in the package returning to Earth? Does everyone honestly think that the world's top scientists and engineers can't come up with a package that can keep an amount of nuclear waste intact from, say, low Earth orbit? Remember, we already have the technology that handles re-entry of multi ton objects from low earth orbit. It may not be elegant, it may not carry a large amount of waste to the sun, but it would be safe.

The Sun is the safest place to put our "unusable" nuclear waste. We just have to decide to do it.

May be you are right, on the paper it seems right, but like all new things there is always incertitudes and there is always something we didn't foresee... And who's gonna take the decision? Is it fair that only a few people can endanger the whole earth by some experimentations ?

Daniel
www.scrabblecheat.org

why not just make bullets and bunker buster warheads? Oh i forgot we already do that

I'm of the opinion that throwing away the waste in a place we cannot get it back is a bad idea. Even at 29,000 tons this stuff is rare.

We don't know when we might need it and what we might want to do with it in the future. Haven't we all thrown stuff away because it was 'clutter' only to find ourselves wishing we hadn't.

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I don't think it would be possible dispose nuclear waste. But i am amazed to know that volcano are not really hot. :)
Regards
http://www.babapandey.com/

Can we dump nuclear waste into a hot volcano ? Guess not . Well, it didn't sound like a good idea in the first place. No worries we will definitely find a better place for our nuclear garbage. Space perhaps ?
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I just hoping most of these suggestions were made in fun 'Teleport'is the daftest idea ever.
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is it possible to do that. i don't think so with today technology. Maybe in the next 50 years we can do it.
Refi from http://www.refinancingmaster.com

this is good debate i never thought volcanoes will be useful in this way,i hope scientists will work on this stuff.
http://halloweencostumesideas4.blogspot.com/

We need to ask ourselves a question how important it is for us to get rid of all the waste and the cost we are willing to pay for it. We could probably put all uranium waste isotope on a big space craft and send it out of our galaxy in to the unknown. Now if we do this and there is big blow up somewhere outside our galaxy than we might get another mini sun to keep us warm in the night and reduce the need for street lighting. Brilliant idea isn't it. :-)
Just one more thing how did charlotte rowe test that tens of thousand of degrees would actually split the atomic nuclei making it inert. Is it really possible to test this in the lab?.

Thermite reation is at 2500deg C 4500deg F, to cool

I know that some sort-minded people don't like the idea of sending the waste to the sun, and for the moment there isn't a safe enough tech. to allow us to do so safely but maybe in the future when space-ships have force or kinetic shields or other techs that are now Sy-Fy maybe then it would be a good idea... after all according to the article the best way to destroy the waste is a thermonuclear reaction... the sun has many thousand of them every second and has temps reaching a few million or tens of thousands of degrees... Or maybe we could all invest in more renewable sources of producing electricity that we don't need to rely on nuclear and petrol fuel as much?!

Even though it is a fuel should we add a radioactive fuel to a sleeping giant like a volcano. It's not worth the chance http://www.calgary--hotels.com

I think that throwing away the waste in a place we cannot get it back is a bad idea. I see it as dangerous, isn't it?
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Just the word radioactive scares the hell out of me. Thanks for bringing it to everyones attention, don't know what the final outcome will be but I will stay tuned. Happy New Year Everyone!!! www.edmontonlites.com

Why don't we just wait till Russia isn't looking, push the whole mess across their border, and just walk away like we we never saw nothing? I used to do it to my brothers and it worked every time!!!

Actually, I think the idea of planting it into a/the subduction zone is a great idea. Great idea MercTheMad! That could actually solve a huge problem.

How about not keeping it on earth is the smartest idea and it seems like no is coming up with it, chances another life-form exist in space are none to a few space is a huge space we can store some more nuclear waste there for future development, while we keep polluting our own planet. Since the golden age we come so far building what we think was our home not thinking about the consequences.

I'm only a boy from holland, 16 years old
And im qeustioning myself why the f*ck would u want to put radioactive sh*t into our planet. U must be crazy son.

Thanks i even had to make a account to comment on this but i really wanted to tell my opinion

how about we just wait for the space elevator to be invented so we can cheaply and safely haul all the radioactive crap off earth and then we can kick it all towards the sun. but of course while it is still on earth the most safe way to store radioactive uranium is to refine it and leave it in ICBMs. just in case someone gets radiation poisoning because wiping out civilizations is less important than storing radioactive material