No area is remote enough. Imagine if the rocket went Kaboom! 20 miles up and 1,600 miles down range spreading its payload over hundreds, possibly thousands, of square miles. Even if we got lucky and that was over an uninhabited area of ocean, it would still be bad. That doesn't address the number of launches required (a pretty hefty environmental impact in it's own right), tracking of the launch vehicles to target, transportation of the payload to the launch site, etc., etc., etc. This idea has been brought up before and immediately dismissed as impractical. I wish it wasn't, but it is. Besides, I'm sure you could find quite a large number of people that felt that lobbing nuclear materials into the sun doesn't qualify as "environmentally friendly".
Microwave transmission of energy to ground stations would not require a nuclear reactor. An orbiting solar collector would be sufficient, and far less dangerous. And wouldn't the night sky look cool. Hate to be bird flying through that energy beam though.

You would also have to consider the current environment. If we (the US) were launching hundreds of tons of nuclear waste into the sky, terrorist groups wouldn't even have to worry about making their own, they'd just have to shoot down ours.

In all practicalities, it would work. It would be cheap. Just build a decent rocket. Fire it off. Once it gets into space it won't last but a few seconds. And as for the terrorist thing it would be about as dangerous as a dirty bomb, and that's if they could even execute something like this. Dirty bombs are just salted C4 explosives (AKA, you just cover, "salt" the explosives with as much radioactive material as you can find). They're only dangerous to people within, say, a fifty foot radius to the explosives, and most people get injured due to the bomb itself. It would probably be a similar situation with the rockets. If any terrorists could even hit one of them I'd guess more people would get killed from the rocket blowing up, most of the waste could even disintegrate in the atmosphere.

Let me take a very apolitical stance and a scientific look. That means, shedding all political leanings, looking at nuclear technology in a cold light of reason and rationality.

The dangers are inherently built-into the nuclear technology no matter how safe the external design is. The greatest scientists and the very architects of nuclear technology feared the underlying process itself, because it is very difficult to control and the conditions under which the process takes place is very high energy and stressful to the materials which surround the reactor. The costs of maintaining a power plant will be extremely high because 60-70% of the costs will be sunk into the safety aspects. That is quite high, I think.

I am fairly familiar with the reactor designs and also the fact that certain kinds of reactors are "safer" than before. Well, yes. It's true that modern reactors are safer and the designs have got better and better over the years. But the danger is still there because of the factors I mentioned: the fuel, the waste products, the dangers of a leak, however small etc. etc. Also imagine the kind of qualified personnel you need to employ in nuclear power stations. That increases the costs a lot more.

Anyway I guess I'm repeating myself. I can understand why some people are optimistic about nuclear technology, but I prefer to remain a stark pessimist no matter what you might have to say.

I've already mentioned the effect of exposure to nuclear radiation on human beings, so I'll leave that out here.

Radioactive waste disintegrating into what ? Atoms ?

It wouldn't work and certainly it wouldn't be cheap. You would have to get that stuff way deep into space to prevent any of it to return.

There must be effective use of energy in the future. We can't just generate nuclear waste to keep our current trend of depletion. Guess what is going to be expensive tomorrow ? Natural water. We'll end up drinking pure H2O instead, right off our car or home's reactors.

Who deleted my post? and why?

nope sorry -- not true
there is way plenty of uranium
the slope of the curve for uranium vs ore grade shows it clearly.
each time the ore grade drops to half as rich there is six times the amount.
drop the ore grade by a factor of ten and you got 300 times again more uranium to use.

on top of that if we were to ever get to the point of needing uranium you can make a breader reactor. supply is endless.

I don't know, just into nothingness. The point is it won't last very long out there and once it's actually out there we won't have to deal with it.
It would be very cheap, the expensive part about space rockets these days is building them to go to a far-off destination and then return home without melting in the process. In the proposal we speak of here, we don't need to worry about returning it safely or making it sturdy enough fly to the moon. Just making it sturdy enough to get past the atmosphere. You could then have the rocket detonate, completely disintegrating any solid waste that previously existed into a gas. What happens after that won't matter because it will disappear in a matter of seconds.
What do you mean? Once it gets into space it will start disintegrating, do you realize how hot it gets out there and how plain deadly the conditions are? And it won't come back to Earth, hitting the atmosphere from outer space is like hitting a 13 foot-thick slab of concrete, for it to break through the atmosphere it would have to go way out there and then come back to gain enough speed.

the perfect place to put nuklear waste is old oil wells.
they have been tightly and sucessfully naturally sealed for 100 million years on all sides top and bottom and contain without leaking all kinds of liquids and methane gass and none of it leaked out.

The whole debate about what to do with nuk waste is somewhat of a fake one.
yes it contains substantial part of (not in my back yard) but who lisnes to that. If you got oil or natural gas in your back yard in the mid west US right now your life is pipes and polution and there aint crap you can do about it.
In the mid east if you got oil in your back yard then your whole family dies from white phosphorus gas. so we can't pretentd anybody listens to not in my back yard.

the environmentalists tactic seems to be make a terrible sugestion and then explain all the ways its terrible. duhhh.

its just not that hard of a problem when you consider the alternative might be
2/3rds of us dying as our population adjusts to life without oil to eat.
Like bacterium in a petre dish when the substrate runs out. oops all dead.

Radioactive waste disintegrating into what ? Atoms ?

Nothingness ?

This is not possible. What you have is matter disintegrating into smaller parts that are still radioactive or toxic elements.

You must make sure it goes deep into space, away from Earth's gravity. Haven't you read that current space waste are a hazard for satellites too ?

It happens to objects and living beings, and not so to the kind of matter we are talking about.

{I love quoting Red Dwarf!} Wrong, wrong, absolutely brimming over with wrongability! The only way it could be assured of dissolving "into nothingness" (which is still wrong, or inaccurate anyway) is if the payload fell into the gravity well of the sun.Wrong again. The lift capacity would have to be fairly high, Saturn V high. Saturn V's ain't cheap. OK, a liquid fueled rocket isn't necessary. What makes you think solid rockets are "cheap"? Or that the stabilization systems are cheap? Or that the guidance and control systems are cheap? Or that the communications and tracking systems are cheap? High School level physics, the only way to boost the payload outside of Earth's gravity is to boost the payload and another rocket into orbit. That rocket must then be carefully aimed and fired with precise timing to boost the payload on its merry way outside the gravitational influence of the Earth. Just yesterday the Japanese launched a 4.6 ton satellite into geosynchronous orbit. Assuming a 2 ton payload and a 2.6 ton secondary booster, thousands would have to be launched. That's multiple solid rocket launches per day - for years. Do you know what chemicals go into a solid rocket engine? I don't either, but having been a "Boomer" sailor I do know you wouldn't want to lick it.

Detonate a highly radioactive payload in close Earth orbit? Are you insane? The fallout would be global!
Space isn't hot, it's cold.Cosmic dust falls to Earth daily, as would this payload. And, unfortunately, considering how dense these heavy metals are - they wouldn't disperse all that much. Certainly not enough to be considered safe.

Why am I bothering to answer this? You need to learn some very basic physics to discuss the matter.

It's not about how much uranium there IS, but about how much uranium we can get at an economic cost. It's just the same with oil, it's not about when it'll run out but when the cheap oil runs out.

I believe there are only a handful of breeder reactors existing worldwide, mostly one-offs and prototypes, and most of those have already been shut down or decommissioned for a variety of reasons. They may offer less waste - but more potential for proliferation of nuclear arms - which if used as such, would be considerably more dangerous than the wastes of conventional reactors.

If the "peak-energy" folks are anywhere near correct - it's too late to attempt to shift a large enough percentage of our energy demands to any kind of new reactors. Not to mention nuclear power is already the least cost effective energy source available, cradle to grave. Or that only national governments can/will insure them...

The only nuclear reactors I advocate are located at least 93 million miles away - like that awesome fusion reactor in the sky we call "sun".

India has a fast breeder reactor at
http://www.kalpakkam.com/

What a wonderful planet you must live on. Meanwhile here on earth.....

i think nuclear energy/reactor/or_whatever_nuclear is not just things about nuclear ... probably its also means the technological know-how and this particuklar knowledge may oftently "spill" over to other technological advances or simply just the nurturing (probably in the long run) of needed technological knowlegdes and experiences from as much scientific/engineering disciplines as possible eg. from aircraft-building , ships-building , cars manufacturing and even bicycles manufacturing ... and also machinaries manufacturing of all kinds and all the way down to their very own bolts and nuts ... but we might have problems with the issue of the so-called "technology transfer" , but i believe "all" scientists(if you are a scientist at all!!) probably wont have any difficulties with that issue ... idealistic ?? too far fetched ?? ... probably , but people wont be living in "real" poverty of all kinds forever as long as its an ongoing process instead of perpertually dumping mind-bugging-"signs of modernity" comsumer goodies ...

_______________________________________________

ok ... seriously ... heres some fun conspiracy shooting games ::

"we do love our planet earth , we do love to stop using nuclear enery ... ok ... how about you stop using it first then we will stop using that too ... but wait !! ... hmm ... we need to stop using that too ?? ... everybody all together from now on ?! ...what a deal it is !! ..."

_______________________________________________

//no worry ... i'm a broadband hugger too
//my monthly electrical usage/bill itself sometimes could probably feed the electrical supply for a(or a few??) dozen families out of a single third-world "normal neighbourhood" ...


.