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Name: Meehan
Status: Teacher
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Prior to 1993
Question:
Nuclear waste disposal in space? Some of my students (fourth graders) want to know why we do not just send nuclear waste into space and blow it up, or into the sun. Any ideas?


Replies:
It is a great idea, the problem is how to you get it there. It is very expensive to launch anything into space and there is THOUSANDS of tons of nuclear waste!

John Hawley

Another obvious problem is safety. What if the rocket should malfunction after liftoff? It might plummet back to Earth, quite probably leading to catastrophic nuclear contamination at the crash site.

Ronald Winther

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