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 is relatively easy to disassemble and decommission nuclear weapons without exploding them.
The hard part about nuclear disarmament treaties in the past was getting everyone involved to agree to them, not the actual safe destruction of the weapons in front of observers from the other side.
Meanwhile shooting stuff into space is hard. It is literally rocket science.
Lots of effort and energy has to be expended to shoot anything into space. Even the best and most reliable rockets have a failure rate still.
Space is not just space either. The region that it is easiest to transport stuff to, is closets to earth and is actually rather crowded. Shooting anything into places father away (and having the stuff stay away) is actually quite hard. Shooting anything into the sun as is frequently suggested is about as hard as it gets.
Exploding a nuclear weapon in space might result in an EMP pulse that could take out lots of critical and expensive orbital infrastructure nearby.
One final reason why you won’t want to shoot any nukes into space is that from the outside it is quite hard to tell the difference between a rocket carrying a nuke to explode in space and a rocket carrying a nuke to explode above someone else’s city. This is really not the sort of thing you would want to have misunderstandings about.
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