IMO, the long term solution will be to simply launch the waste into space. With low enough launch costs the extra mass needed to armor the waste against accidents becomes tolerable.
And who wants spent nuclear fuel in low earth orbit? This is a far worse location for spent fuel than buried in a bunker. This is a worse location than Times Square.
Low earth orbit would just be where it's transferred to something to carry it farther out, for example using solar-electric engines.
For all this, remember it isn't done immediately, it's done in (say) 300 years when the short lived fission products are mostly gone.
Plus even if this were free, “shoot 180k tons of nuclear waste into space” seems like a terrible idea in general. It’s one of those ideas that make sense only until you think about the ramifications. What happens when inevitably one of the 3 thousand Falcon heavy rockets explodes and the armor fails and we spread nuclear waste over 3 states?
A full launch on F9 (with recovered S1) is estimated to cost $15M and can put up to 17,600 kg into LEO, or $850/kg.
> (>4 accounting for the 10x launch armor).
You're double counting there. 3x would be just fine even with 10x launch armor.
> seems like a terrible idea in general
And here's the problem: you started from an emotional reaction and are trying to rationalize that.
Estimated by who? SpaceX charges 74 million for this. Nothing credible I can find indicates that SpaceX is running an amazing 80% profit margin on Falcon 9 launches.
> And here's the problem: you started from an emotional reaction and are trying to rationalize that.
No, your premise is “just launch the trash into space” and you’re hand waving away the complexity, costs, and danger.
Anyway, the number is from fairly old Musk interviews. Costs have likely decreased since then.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2026/02/spacex-falcon-9-true-c...
> No, your premise is “just launch the trash into space” and you’re hand waving away the complexity, costs, and danger.
At least I didn't trot out a string of obvious errors like you did.
When people do that, it's a strong tell they're engaging in broken thinking. What you did, I think, is believe something, then try to rationalize it. When your thinking reached a justification you liked you just stopped thinking (because, after all, thinking more could break the pleasing argument you just constructed, and that would feel bad).
Is your premise that SpaceX will ship nuclear waste at or below cost? Because the 74 million is a publicly available price. And when SpaceX ships stuff for the government the prices go up, not down.
> Anyway, the number is from fairly old Musk interviews.
Yes, Musk is famously honest and accurate with his claims.
> At least I didn't trot out a string of obvious errors like you did.
What obvious errors are those? You don’t seem to like that I’m using publicly available pricing.
> When people do that, it's a strong tell they're engaging in broken thinking. What you did, I think, is believe something, then try to rationalize it. When your thinking reached a justification you liked you just stopped thinking
Pot, meet kettle. You are basing your entire premise on a speculative future that doesn’t exist. You should have just proposed sending it up the space elevator.
None of this idea makes sense from a financial, physical, or risk stand point. “This stuff is too dangerous to store in a hole, let’s launch it into space in 3000 rockets, and then we’ll push it away from earth with another thousand solar electric rockets, and then we’ll use solar energy to evaporate it all! What could go wrong?”
Honestly if you’re betting on a hypothetical future where all this is effectively free, why not just bet on a future where reprocessing uranium drops in price as well?
Orion (in its fission bomb form) is impractical and would be insane to launch from Earth, but it holds the title of being the only “torch ship” drive we know how to build. We could technically build it.
I can purchase produce grown on a different continent for less than that at the grocery store so something isn't right here.
Freight cost is certainly way lower.
The elements that are used in nuclear reactors (particularly Uranium and Plutonium) are pretty dense, and thus heavy.
The only downside is the “waste” is quite valuable. MSRs can also use it, and their waste is only dangerous for ~300 years.
The waste, likely packaged in torpedo shaped structures made of corrosion proof, high density, high strength materials, would arrive at somewhere around 150 MPH. Being extremely dense and heavy, they would penetrate deeply into the sea bottom, estimated at 35-55 meters deep. There’s no chance they’d somehow be forced back to the surface. Even if they were, being sealed they would be harmless.
Even if by some miracle one broke open at the sea floor, the nuclear material is dense and wouldn’t disperse. There’s very little life to affect down there regardless.
For a thorough analysis (which shows how useful the frontier models are getting at this kind of thing), see https://x.com/i/grok/share/276607c72b5e4f639527935cbc614fa0
> 50+ pounds of fuel
Just out of curiosity, how much do you think LOX/LNG propellant costs?
Metaphor. Allegory. Analogy. Parable.