I’m aware that it’s illegal to put any kind of weapon in space, for the sake of the explanation assume there’s no legal reason why not.
My Grug Smash brain has me wondering that if nuclear weapons are so difficult to properly dispose of, surely the easiest option would be to set them off somewhere where they can’t cause any damage.
In: Physics
It sounds like you’re confusing two separate issues – *nuclear waste* and *nuclear weapons*.
The issue with disposing of *nuclear waste* (the radioactive leftovers after using nuclear fuel) is that it’s *very* heavy (one of the densest materials on Earth), and launching heavy stuff into space is expensive. You’d also need to get it far away enough that it wouldn’t just go into orbit and rain radioactive particles back onto the planet.
*Nuclear weapons* are a completely different problem. Physically, destroying a nuclear weapon without detonating it is easy (there is radioactive material in it, which brings things back to the first problem, but that’s not the main issue). The reason why countries don’t get rid of them is because no country trusts the other countries enough to enter a “let’s get rid of all our nukes” agreement. Whoever did it last could then just say “Just kidding, actually we didn’t get rid of our nukes after all, now surrender or we’ll nuke you.”
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