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Perhaps it could, but it would be prohibitivly expensive. World-wide, about 10,0 tons of radioactive fuel is generated. (Hafele, Wolf. “Energy from Nuclear Power.” _Energy for Planet Earth._ New York: W.H. Freeman and Company. p. 103).
The big Ariene 5 rockets can get about 6 tons max into earth escape orbit. That would be around 32 launches PER WEEK. But the rods would need at least some shielding just to get transfered to the lift vehicle and make it throught the launch. A minial lead sheilding would double the mass, getting us to over 60 launches per week. To put this into perspective, thats over $150 Millon per launch, $9 billion per week, nearly half a trillion per year. And that doesn’t include the cost to transfer the fuel to the rockets. As another point of perspective, Ariane 5 launches currently happen at a rate of 1 every few weeks.
But the real reason this would never happen would be the risk of an accident, where the radioactive material would fall back to earth. Burning in the atmosphere won’t help- burning doesn’t reduce the radioactivity. Given that Ariane’s have a failure rate on the order of 10% or so, this would never be given the green light.
For another perspective on what to do with nuclear waste, look at the report in the Sources. It discusses reusing the fuel rods. Some contries do this already; but in the US, most spent fuel rods still have about 96% of there energy left.
Source(s): http://www.ndu.edu/library/ic6/94-S-23.pdf
Yes it could. Its a simple as loading it unto a shuttle and launching it off. Or if you wanted to get more complex, running a mission and dumping it then returning the shuttle. The fact is, we as a people probably never will. Governments wouldnt waste the millions of dollars needed to run the program. They already dump it in oceans and other places to save themselves money. So the final answer is they can, but they wont.
The waste produced is too much to deliver to space. If an accident occured during launching, it would do more damage that storing on land.
Yes, but the problem is the potential for accidents. Can you imagine if the ship blew up or crashed what a disaster that would be?
It could but it would cost a lot. Also we’ve already cluttered up earth. Now you want us to be cosmic litterers.
of course, but if (seriously) there are aliens in the space then it is bad to be selfish. it can be disaster fro them and u know, it is not good at all if there are aliens