That’s a huge waste of energy.
If the “waste” is “highly radioactive” that means that is has A LOT of energy left in it. It should be reprocessed, recycled, and should provide power for another 20years. The whole idea of nuclear waste needing billions of years of storage is just propaganda to ensure nuclear reactors are never a threat to the existing fossil fuel markets.
By the way despite a huge increase in the amount of “green energy” produced by germany last year, they have also burned more fossil fuels then they ever have in history, same story in China, the US and other European countries.
why can’t we launch the waste to the sun?
Because we are talking about thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive waste (not counting the lower ones). A quick search tells me in the region of 15.000t for Germany. That alone makes it pretty expensive.
And then you want to launch it into space where every start you risk an explosion that spreads that waste?
Accidents happen and considering the amount of waste there would be have to be quite a few launches.
I’m not sure if there is a good list out there, but just some examples from memory: just last month space x failed to deliver satellites in the right orbit and I think one of the other incidents at the end relates to this one that actually exploded.
The second one ofc is a bit older, but still what is an acceptable risk to take when handling radioactive material? And the recent one also wouldn’t be fun.
I would also imagine that handling the waste on the ground would make everything much more difficult until the launch.
Putting things into space is extremely expensive in both money and harm to the environment.
We know where the best spots would be geologically, but the Bavarians happen to live there. That’s why the waste is stored in leaky former salt mines in Northern Germany, in rusty barrels. The Bavarians are big proponents of nuclear energy, but there’s no way they want that shit buried in their glorious territory.
What’s with the jacked shirtless dude lmao
