Reply To: Energy Output – MW & GW

[Brian H]

Axil wrote:

Radioactive waste is a big problem, but I have a possible solution. I think we could install big accelerator tracks on the sides of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Then we take 500 lb. capsules of radioactive waste and shoot them into the sun. We could also shoot things into other parts of the solar system as the earth turns. It would be easy enought to do the timing, and a little bit of directional control while still in the atmosphere could do most of the course correcting. Each day, you could probably shoot 10,000 lbs. into the sun. That’s only 20 shots, which should be easy to do in 10 minutes. The technology is the same as the high speed roller coaster rides, only the track would be two miles in length. When it wasn’t shooting payloads into space, it could shoot people into the stratosphere on suborbital joyrides. Colombia could make a fortune getting rid of other countries’ waste, and get a booming tourist industry as well.

To leave planet Earth an escape velocity of 11.2 km/s is required, that escape velocity for Earth (to escape its “gravity well”) is about 25,000 mph (or 36, 700 ft per second).

It is impossible to achieve that velocity passing through the lower levels of the earth’s atmosphere because of the fictional heat generated by passage through that dense layer of air beginning at 15,000 feet elevation that your plan would entail. That fictional heating would vaporize all known materials.

The consequence is that the waste package would vaporize and radioactive vapor would contaminant Colombia and the other surrounding nations. I am sorry to have disabused you of your fantasy.

True, but the heating is not “fictional” it’s quite real. Frictional, even! 😆

And you can’t “contaminant” anything, though you can “contaminate” it. (The latter term is called a “verb”, whereas contaminant is an example of a “noun”.) YCLIU. 😛