Why can’t we dump it into a volcano or yeet it into space? Or for that matter, if it’s still radioactive, doesn’t that mean there is still more juice we could squeeze out of it?
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> Why can’t we dump it into a volcano
Contrary to popular belief, burning stuff doesn’t just make it disintegrate into nothingness. Reality works differently to Minecraft and volcanoes just contain really hot rocks. Burning radioactive waste would make a cloud of radioactive smoke which would drift through the air and contaminate a huge area. It would be a really bad idea.
> or yeet it into space?
“Yeeting into space” is incredibly expensive and fairly dangerous to boot. There is around 2000 tons of radioactive waste produced each year, and with a cost of $95 million per ton to even reach orbit that would mean $190 billion spent minimum, ignoring the weight of the craft to get there! And that is just for the waste alone to reach orbit, it needs to go a lot faster to actually continue away from Earth. Orbital velocity is about 8 kilometers per second, while escape velocity is 11 kilometers per second. If it was only put into orbit then not only would it clutter up the place it would also eventually fall back to Earth in an unpredictable location, spreading across the land in a giant radioactive plume. Again, a really bad idea.
> Or for that matter, if it’s still radioactive, doesn’t that mean there is still more juice we could squeeze out of it?
That is an idea which has been looked into but it just isn’t worth the effort at this point. It is much easier to just bury the waste deep underground where it won’t bother anyone than try to reprocess it into more fuel, or try any other crazy ideas which would likely lead to it poisoning large swaths of land and people.
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