Can throwing trash into lava solve our landfill problem?

[cjl]

Steel melts somewhere around 2700F, and titanium melts around 3000F, so it's not unreasonable to assume that titanium would melt in a container of molten steel if the steel isn't right at the melting point. From some quick googling, temperatures above the melting point of titanium are pretty common in steelmaking.

 

[Bandersnatch]

From some quick googling, temperatures above the melting point of titanium are pretty common in steelmaking.

From what I understood, foundries are designed to not get much above the melting point, and that temperature depends on the alloy. But yeah, it's possible. Hence the 'likely' qualifier.
I also wondered how alloying of titanium can change the melting temp, but couldn't find anything - not to mention the movies weren't precise enough about their made-up lore to specify the details of alloy composition.

 

[cjl]

Ti-6Al-4V is pretty common, and starts melting about 100F below pure Ti, so the number I used above is probably pretty representative.

 

[CWatters]

How would you recover energy from it if you just put it into a volcano or subduction zone? Most modern incinerators use it to generate electricity.

 

[jedishrfu]

Not to mention that subduction zones are often underwater and that they move at rates of centimeters per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction

https://www.livescience.com/43220-subduction-zone-definition.html

This would mean burying the trash in the subduction zone manually in order to get it to subduct and realizing that should the zone snap the trash could be sent everywhere via tsunami action.

Here's an article on the subducting of nuclear waste:

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/...ld-nuclear-waste-be-disposed-subduction-zones

I think its time now to close this thread as we have pretty much exhausted all the reasons for why this won't work and is likely an interesting but bad idea for getting rid of our trash.

I'd like to thank everyone for contributing here and now formally close this thread.