How come, that when we have radioactive material that we dont send it to the sun? its radioactive its self?

Question

Its radioactive, could the waste make the sun last longer?

Answer 1

I'd imagine no one really wants to get close enough to the stuff to do what it takes to send it to the sun. Radioactive waste + high heat could also turn out pretty nasty.

Answer 2

the trouble would be the danger of sending it into space

rockets explode all the time,look at the space shuttle disaster

could make for some very  big catastrophe

Answer 3

NO to both problems . It would cost too much and be too dangerous. NASA had some radioactive piles on some of there missions. What happens if something goes wrong and it burns up in reentry. That could spread it every where.

Answer 4

rockets are very expensive and nasa is more concerned with mars and titan and stuff for some reason. to the user called Rebecca: NO DUH the sun has gravity, thats what makes the planets circle around it!!! still in second grade?

Answer 5

it is very expensive and sometimes the rockets fail (they blow up).  that would be a nice way to spread some radioactivity around, not very desireable.

Answer 6

We probably won't be able to get it close enough to the sun anyway.

Answer 7

The Sun is not radioactive (not in the nuclear sense of the word, as used on Earth).

The nuclear reaction on the sun is one of fusion:  hydrogen atoms are rammed together to form helium atoms, releasing energy in the process.

Our radioactive waste is made up of very large atoms that release energy (and ionizing radiation) by fission:  the bigger atoms become smaller, thereby releasing energy.

The cutoff size is the iron atom.  Anything smaller can only release energy by fusion; anything bigger can only release energy by fission.

The Sun would not use the energy in radioactive waste. And even if it did:

The Sun presently uses four million tonnes of mass PER SECOND to produce its energy.  Adding a few tonnes of stuff which, for the Sun, is useless, will not change much of anything.

But for us, it would cost a lot of money (it takes less energy to send rockets to other stars than it is to send one directly into the Sun) and it could be dangerous (rockets do sometimes blow up on lift-off, and they do sometimes get off course)

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The Earth orbits the sun at a speed of 30 km/s.  Anything we launch into space starts off with this same speed (relative to the Sun) until we do something to it.

The solar escape velocity at our distance from the Sun is 42 km/s.

To send a rocket outside our solar system "costs" the energy needed to add 12 km/s to the speed of the rocket.

To send a rocket into the Sun costs the energy needed to add 30 km/s the other way (we have to remove the existing 30 km/s speed).  If we fail to remove all the energy, the rocket will still have some sideways speed.  It would miss the Sun and continue on a very eccentric orbit that would take it back to our own orbit... every time it comes around (until it hits something).

Answer 8

It would just cost way to much and it would be dangerous if it crashed or malfunctioned.

Answer 9

that would be like spitting in the ocean. the sun is about 300,000 times more massive than the earth. and you do NOT want the rocket containing radioactive waste to blow up.

Answer 10

Not only would that be "astronomically" expensive, and incredibly dangerous, it would NOT help the sun burn longer since the sun runs on fusion, not fission, and the nuclear waste is much too heavy to react via fusion.

Nor would the sun burning a few minutes longer help, as it has another six billion years left to go! Remember, the Sun is a million times the volume of Earth......

Answer 11

Cost, it would be incredibly expensive, and safety.

Answer 12

The Sun is not radioactive. The Earth is FAR more radioactive than the sun, per unit mass.

Answer 13

Interesting concept. But how would we be able to get it to the sun safely? It would be really expensive and there are different types of radioation how do we know that the radioactive materials wont some how affect the atmosphere? Radioactive material takes 1000's of years to decompose even in extreme heats so it most likely wont decompose in the suns heat and the sun most likely doesnt have gravity so the material would proberly just float around in space which again is dangerous

Answer 14

I think the most likely reason that we don't is the huge expense it would involve.  I used to wonder why we didn't just send all our trash to the sun instead of landfills/pollution.  But it would be really expensive.  (& the earth would eventually get smaller and smaller XD ) I don't know enough chemistry to answer the other bit about the sun lasting longer.

Answer 15

that sounds good,

but what if we send it to the sun and it doesn't burn up. what

if we send it there and it comes

flying back at us with deadly radioactive force

that could kill the whole population of the world

today as we know it....

what goes up,must come down!

Answer 16

Well, we don't send it to space, because:

-after sometime we might want to relocate it and it is almost impossible to locate something that is floating around space without a tracking device.

-it's expensive

-the Sun might blow up, don't even talk about making it last longer.

haha.

Answer 17

We'd have to be launching a rocket about every 2 minutes, 24/7. There's a lot more radioactive waste than people realize. The waste would not make the sun last longer, as it would never actually reach the sun. The rocket and the waste aboard it would be vaporised way before it got even close, and would then become a part of the solar wind.