KoolAndBlue t1_ivqwo5u wrote on November 9, 2022 at 11:14 PM

I know this is a dumb question, but I’ve always wondered-

What’s stopping us from building a huge spaceship, loading it up with a bunch of nuclear waste/trash and shooting it into the Sun or off into space? Are we not capable of building a spaceship large enough, are we too afraid of what would happen if the launch failed, would the ship burn up leaving the Earth’s atmosphere and release its’ contents, etc.? Would something like this be a viable solution for disposing of our waste in the future?

ffenliv t1_ivrgkf8 wrote on November 10, 2022 at 1:42 AM

As a non-expert here, launching nuclear waste is going to be a massive risk. Rates of rocket failure mean you're taking a gigantic risk of just blowing a bunch of waste up over the water, or even worse, the land.

It also take a lot more energy than you might think to get a lot of weight into orbit, and then you have to use a truckload more fuel to get it to the sun.