Nuclear Waste Disposal in Space: BEP's Best Hope?
- Texas A and M University, College Station, Texas (United States)
The best technology is worthless if it cannot find a market Beam energy propulsion (BEP) is a very promising technology, but faces major competition from less capable but fully developed conventional rockets. Rockets can easily handle projected markets for payloads into space. Without a new, huge demand for launch capability, BEP is unlikely to gain the resources it needs for development and application. Launching tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste into space for safe and permanent disposal will provide that necessary demand while solving a major problem on earth. Several options exist to dispose of nuclear waste, including solar orbit, lunar orbit, soft lunar landing, launching outside the solar system, and launching into the sun.
- OSTI ID:
- 20800252
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 830, Issue 1; Conference: 4. international symposium on beamed energy propulsion, Nara (Japan), 15-18 Nov 2005; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2203301; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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