I wrote this research piece for the Sierra Club Radioactive Waste Campaign Newspaper in 1985, while I was living in Manhattan. Between the time I wrote it and the time it appeared in print, the space shuttle Challenger crashed dramatically and tragically. As a result, the article appeared with an editorial lead-in and several last-minute changes to prevent the appearance of opportunism. The version below is my original submission, which I think is much nicer than the hastily altered version that actually ran.

Despite the long time that's elapsed since I researched and wrote this, much of the content is still relevant.

Outer Space: the Easy Way Out?

"Why not just get rid of radioactive waste by shooting it into space?"

This question comes up frequently in community meetings when citizens are faced with the danger of a radioactive waste dump in their area. It sounds like the perfect solution, a way to get rid of our worries forever, and with hardly any fuss or bother. As it turns out, however, this "solution" is neither as perfect nor as easy as it sounds. To see "why not," let's look at it in some detail.

Outer space is a big place. Where exactly would the waste go? Among a number of potential waste sites in space, the closest and most easily accessible is a geocentric orbit, that is, an orbit around the earth. Unfortunately, we would not really have gotten rid of the waste by putting it into such an orbit. Rather, the same problem we now have with land and sea disposal — that the stuff doesn't stay where it's put — would threaten us from above as well as from below. Imagine thousands of highly radioactive satellites orbiting the earth. Satellite orbits have been known to decay, and we could not be sure that some of these orbiting waste containers would not fall back toward earth, burning up in the atmosphere and raining down on us as fallout. Even if the orbits should remain intact, we would still face the problem of leakage, just as we do with terrestrial disposal: meteors, dust, and space debris could damage the containers, releasing radioactive particles, some of which would enter the earth's atmosphere. Further, there would always be a risk of collision between orbiting waste containers, and the chances of such a collision would increase each time another waste container were raised into orbit. One compound of this waste would be plutonium dioxide, a chemical so deadly that inhaling a speck, less than one millionth of a gram, can result in lung cancer.

Since it doesn't seem like such a good idea to have this stuff circling around right overhead, government-sponsored studies of space-disposal schemes have sought ways to use other disposal sites in space. A moon crater, the sun, deep space, and an orbit encircling the moon have all been considered as potential disposal sites. Among the sites considered, the one judged most suitable was a heliocentric orbit (an orbit around the sun) between the orbits of Earth and Venus.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) came up with a scheme for sending radioactive waste into this heliocentric orbit. The first step would be to launch something called an Orbital Transfer System (OTS). The OTS would be launched into a geocentric orbit inside a carrier that's basically a space shuttle without the wings. Four hours after this launch, there would be a second launch. This time, it would be a manned space-shuttle type vehicle carrying a payload of radioactive waste. This vehicle would make a rendezvous with the OTS and hand over the waste. Then, while the manned shuttle vehicle stays in a low geocentric orbit, the OTS would swing out in a higher orbit and eject the waste payload along with a small propulsion and guidance system called a Solar Orbit Insertion Stage (SOIS). The remaining portion of the OTS would slow to a lower orbit, meet up with the shuttle again and get carried back down to the ground for another round. Meanwhile, the SOIS and the waste package would coast for 165 days in a transfer orbit, after which time, booster rockets in the SOIS would guide the waste package into a heliocentric orbit.

These maneuvers would dispose of about 1200 pounds of radioactive waste. Now, due to the nature of the payload, the shuttle crew is going to be exposed to radiation during the flight. To reduce this exposure, some shielding is required. In addition, the waste must be securely encased to help contain it if something goes wrong and it ends up falling back down to earth. After this casement and shielding are added, our shipment of 1200 pounds of waste ends up weighing more than 60,000 pounds (1982 Boeing report to NASA).

But if we are to add up all the weight that must be launched into space to dispose of this 1200 pounds of waste, we must also include the shuttle itself as well the crew members and all the associated equipment. This brings the weight for one shipment up to something on the order of 240,000 pounds. And even this is not everything. For not one, but two launches would be required for each disposal mission, giving us a grand total of 480,000 pounds. Thus, for each pound of waste to be disposed, we would actually have to launch about 400 pounds.

If you're starting to suspect that it may cost a lot of money to send radioactive waste into space, you're right. In 1980, the cost for one disposal mission was estimated at $45.7 million; the initial cost of the space equipment was estimated at $3.2 billion. And these estimates, which must be adjusted for five years of inflation, do not include the costs of handling, transporting, and packaging the waste, much of which must be done by remote-control equipment.

A 1982 report to NASA by Battelle estimated that 750 missions would be required to dispose of the waste from the used fuel rods that will have accumulated by the year 2003. But before you start figuring taxpayer costs, consider that this estimate is based on the assumption that used fuel rods will be reprocessed. This is a highly questionable assumption.

The remains of the West Valley reprocessing plant, the only U.S. attempt to reprocess commercial fuel rods stands as silent but deadly witness to the failure of reprocessing. Silent, because the plant was closed down in 1972, after failing to achieve even one-third of its expected operating capacity and after contaminating the surrounding countryside with releases of radioactive gasses and liquids. Deadly, because after its six years of operation, it left behind 2.3 million cubic feet of so-called "low-level" radioactive waste, 42 ruptured fuel rods encased in concrete and buried, and 572,000 gallons of liquid high-level radioactive waste, stored underground in two steel tanks that have already leaked and will eventually deteriorate.

If we make the far more plausible assumption that reprocessing is not a viable option, the Battelle estimate will have to be increased from 750 missions to about 750,000. Even if all these missions were somehow carried out, despite the phenomenal cost and the several thousand years required just to launch this many shipments, we still would not have rid the earth of radioactive waste. Used fuel rods are only a part of the nuclear legacy. We would then have to contend with our so-called "low-level" wastes (many of which are lethal), uranium mill tailings, and radioactive waste from the production of nuclear weapons, as well as all the fuel rods from nuclear power plants outside the U.S.

And then there's the risk involved in space dumping. Putting radioactive waste into a heliocentric orbit would only reduce, not eliminate, the risks of putting it into a geocentric orbit. Even though the waste containers would be farther away, radioactive particles released from collisions with meteors could still make their way back to earth. Worse, a failure of the Orbital Transfer System could result in the entire waste package returning to earth, burning up on re-entry, and releasing its radioactive contents into the atmosphere.

A launch failure would bring the waste plummeting back to earth, and, according to the Battelle study, even that 58,800 pounds of packaging might not withstand such a fall if the payload should happen to land on hard rock. It might also land in the ocean, where, if recovery attempts should fail, it would eventually corrode, releasing all its radioactive wastes. The Battelle report also lists several other possible accidents which could result in a release of radioactive waste. And, of course, the more waste disposed in space, the greater the risk of an accident with serious consequences.

There are no science-fiction style rescue missions on the way to save the people of earth from their follies and indulgences. On the contrary, the fact that the U.S. government has turned to investigating space disposal schemes indicates how desperate the radioactive waste problem has become.

Robin Hewitt, 1985