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SHISHKABOB
- 541
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okay so I don't want this to be an argument on whether dumping nuclear waste into the sun is feasible or practical or not, as I'm pretty sure it's not
rather I'd like to ask a question that my mom asked me once when I was trying to argue the idea to her. She asked me: "well if you dumped so much radioactive material into the sun, how do you know what will happen if you do that? What if something terrible happens that we could not have predicted?"
My opinion was that the sun is a giant furnace and is already emitting radiation in all sorts of forms and adding a relatively tiny amount of heavy elements to it is not going to have a profound effect on the sun's behavior. She was not convinced, basing her opinion on the fact that I really had no idea what I was talking about, and I really don't.
So, would anything bad happened if we dumped all of our radioactive waste material into the sun? http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100205151923AAzOMTF this guy gives an estimate around the middle of his post that there's 60,000 tons of radioactive waste in the world.
if the sun is about 2x10^30 kg, and 60,000 tons is 54.4x10^6 kg, will dumping 2.72e-23% of the sun's mass of radioactive material do anything? What if we had a hell of a lot more nuclear waste, let's say 60 trillion tons, over the course of many years and a big increase in nuclear power plant production, would that much do anything?
What if we dump it all in at once? Will that be different from dumping over a relatively long period of time?
I guess the basic question here is: what happens to nuclear waste if you vaporize it? And then also would it come spraying out of the sun back at us?
EDIT: maybe this should have gone in the nuclear part of the forums, but I was particularly interested in the sun part of the question
rather I'd like to ask a question that my mom asked me once when I was trying to argue the idea to her. She asked me: "well if you dumped so much radioactive material into the sun, how do you know what will happen if you do that? What if something terrible happens that we could not have predicted?"
My opinion was that the sun is a giant furnace and is already emitting radiation in all sorts of forms and adding a relatively tiny amount of heavy elements to it is not going to have a profound effect on the sun's behavior. She was not convinced, basing her opinion on the fact that I really had no idea what I was talking about, and I really don't.
So, would anything bad happened if we dumped all of our radioactive waste material into the sun? http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100205151923AAzOMTF this guy gives an estimate around the middle of his post that there's 60,000 tons of radioactive waste in the world.
if the sun is about 2x10^30 kg, and 60,000 tons is 54.4x10^6 kg, will dumping 2.72e-23% of the sun's mass of radioactive material do anything? What if we had a hell of a lot more nuclear waste, let's say 60 trillion tons, over the course of many years and a big increase in nuclear power plant production, would that much do anything?
What if we dump it all in at once? Will that be different from dumping over a relatively long period of time?
I guess the basic question here is: what happens to nuclear waste if you vaporize it? And then also would it come spraying out of the sun back at us?
EDIT: maybe this should have gone in the nuclear part of the forums, but I was particularly interested in the sun part of the question
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