CDR: Re: Nuclear waste

[petro]

>At 9:02 PM -0700 10/21/00, petro wrote:
>>May:
>>>5. Not that this is necessarily the best option. The domes in deep 
>>>caves are perfectly fine. And there is much to be said for the 
>>>Pournelle/Hogan solution: put the vitreous beads in 
>>>concrete-filled drums, load them onto pallets, then park the 
>>>pallets in neat rows and columns in the center of a 10 km by 10 km 
>>>fenced area in the Mojave Desert of California. Very little rain 
>>>(geological records and fossil lakes show this); certainly no 
>>>significant flash flooding. Then erect signs, in many languages, 
>>>and with skull-and-crossbones, saying: "This area is poisoned." 
>>>Even the most bizarre devolution-to-savagery scenarios are 
>>>unlikely to have wandering savages in the waterless Mojave trying 
>>>to scavenge stuff out of sealed drums marked with skulls and 
>>>crossbones!
>>
>>	I've never really understood why we don't just put this stuff 
>>in some *really* tough polycarbonate containers aboard "mature" 
>>technology rockets and launch it into the biggest heat source in 
>>the solar system.
>>
>>	I realize that there is a lot of it, but still.
>
>This is a very old idea, rejected for good cause many, many years ago.
>
>Need I elaborate?

	The only things I can think of are:

	(1) Cost of pushing heavy shit up the gravity slope.

	(2) Danger of rocket "catastrophically" failing and blowing 
radioactive material all over hell and gone.

	(3) Not a chance in hell of selling it to the tree huggers 
and the ignorant.

	(1) Is the only one that makes sense, but we should be able 
to find a cheaper way of getting up there. We should be able to 
engineer around (2).

	(3) Is probably the toughest nut to crack.

	So, I am not asking for much elaboration, just a bit of a clue.
-- 
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