No Time to (Nuclear) Waste!

Hopefully my last post got the point across that long-term, safe, relatively cheap, and low maintenance solutions to where to put nuclear waste is something that most governments want and need. In fact I'd say it's one of the most crucial issues when thinking about nuclear energy as a long-term energy source Several long term storage solutions have already been thought of, several have been put into practice, others... not so much. Today I'd like to focus specifically on one that's definitely been thought of a lot - space disposal. The idea seems sound; put nuclear waste on a rocket, and jet it into the Sun, or onto the Moon, or even just on a random trajectory into the vast emptiness of space. It seemed like such an easy way out that companies started researching into the possibilities, Boeing had a serious look in the 1980s into investing in space disposal but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it.  (Cospar Information Bulletin, 1980) . Why? Well not because

So like I said in my last post, humanity currently has an awkward 276,000 tonnes of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to deal with. In this post I'd like to briefly show you how we currently deal with this waste. There are two main ways to store SNF, 'dry' and 'wet (Romanto, 2011) . Wet storage involves placing the spent nuclear fuel in large pools of water. Water is a good 'shield' for the radiation and it also helps to cool the hot radioactive waste. Over summer I was actually lucky enough to visit the pools in Sweden where their SNF is stored, the level of shielding the water provided meant we could stand right next to the pools! However my worries did prompt a question aptly answered by one of my favourite comic series:  xkcd . I remember being very surprised by two things, the fact that the pools literally looked like a large public Olympic sized swimming pool, and also the incredible heat in the room emanating from the pool, it was 5C at the