Why Shooting Nuclear Waste into Space Is a Horrible Idea

Overview

This Kurzgesagt video investigates the idea of shooting nuclear waste into space and demonstrates why it is not just a bad fix but a horribly bad one when you consider costs, logistics, and risk.

Key insights

• Waste categories and volumes: about 440 active reactors produce roughly 11,000 tons of high level waste each year, with 400,000 tons accumulated since 1954.
• Costly logistics: launching waste to orbit costs around $4,000 per kilogram, vastly more expensive than the $1,600 per kilogram to manufacture nuclear fuel.
• Space risks: space debris, atmospheric drag, and potential radiological release make space disposal dangerously uncertain.
• Alternative solutions: deep underground burial and reprocessing are presented as safer long term options, while coal remains a larger radiological risk than high level waste.

Introduction

In a Kurzgesagt lab style, the video examines a provocative idea: shooting high level nuclear waste into space as a fix to the nuclear waste problem. The presenter walks through the scale of the issue, the costs, and the risks, showing why space disposal is not a viable solution.

What is nuclear waste

The video explains that nuclear waste is categorized into three broad levels. Low level waste includes tools and gloves with minor short lived radioactivity; intermediate level waste involves materials near a reactor core and is handleable through burial or glass/concrete embedding. High level waste is the small, intensely radioactive, heat-producing portion extracted from spent fuel. Collectively these waste streams amount to thousands of tons yearly and hundreds of thousands accumulated since the 1950s.

The space disposal proposition

Proponents argue space seems empty and uninhabited, making it an appealing dumping ground. The video challenges this view by highlighting multiple constraints: the sheer mass of waste, the need for rockets, and the astronomical costs and risks involved.

Cost and practicality

Launching into low Earth orbit costs about $4,000 per kilogram, while producing nuclear fuel costs around $1,600 per kilogram. This makes space disposal orders of magnitude more expensive than current disposal methods. Even if all legacy and current waste were to be launched, the price tag would be enormous, and the infrastructure required would need to grow dramatically, potentially creating a whole new space industry to handle it.

Limited rocket availability

Past years show hundreds of launches; in 2021 there were 135. Even if launches were repurposed to carry waste, estimates show that only a fraction of the waste could be processed in this way, requiring many more rockets and more capable vehicles to meet the demand.

Space is hard and risky

In space, debris management and satellite collision avoidance become major headaches. Some waste would experience drag and reenter, potentially spreading radioactivity across oceans or land. The video also notes that moving waste to the Moon or Sun would require even bigger rockets, which increases both cost and risk. Additionally, the integrity of rockets is not guaranteed: there are real failure rates that could release radioactive material far and wide.

Problem 3 Rockets fail

Despite advances, rocket failures remain non-negligible. Launch failures could spread contamination through the atmosphere and water, far from the launch site, causing widespread harm and distrust in the nuclear industry.

Conclusion and context

The video concludes that fear and bad ideas around nuclear waste reveal gaps in risk understanding. It emphasizes the bigger risk lies in how we fail to manage waste properly rather than in the waste itself. Safer strategies such as deep underground storage or reprocessing are highlighted, while shooting waste into space is deemed one of the worst possible solutions. The message reinforces that space dumping is neither feasible nor responsible, and urges continued focus on credible disposal methods rather than sensational fixes.