I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the scale of the problem of nuclear waste. If we took all the nuclear waste produced in a year and evenly blended it into all gasoline burned in a year would the radiation be deadly? Dangerous? Detectable?
It’s easiest to get numbers for the US.
2 000 000 kg of waste per year
510 000 000 000 Liters of gasoline
Obviously this isn’t a real proposal, although I think it would reduce carbon emissions…
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Adding lead to gasoline didn’t reduce carbon emissions. Why do you think some other toxin would? You’re just poisoning the atmosphere for funsies. Skip the convoluted steps and just detonate bombs in the atmosphere. Inject it right into gothams water main, ya genocidal supervillain.
Aerosolized atomic waste, what could possibly go wrong?
Wait.
There is a documentary about licking radioactive isotopes that might apply here.
Search for “Radium City documentary”, watch, then think about that, but breathable.
The solution to nuclear waste is to recycle it. Won’t happen unless we can drive down the cost of doing so.
Is your proposal basically to burn away nuclear waste? Why is the gasoline important?
Few issues I see:
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I don’t think such waste can be disposed safety by incineration. Because if it could, we’ve have done so already. It’s probably the go to solution when it comes to waste disposal, apart from just burying it or dumping it in the ocean.
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The main problem is the safety and handling of such radioactive waste. You do not want it anywhere near people and that’s why it’s isolated. They are highly dangerous. Do you want such a substance sitting in your vehicle, garage, gas station with high traffic, etc? The radioactive substance doesn’t just go away when you add gasoline to it.
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Even assuming we can get past the safety issues, the said mixture will likely not work in vehicles at all, or would destroy your engine.
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How would this reduce carbon emissions? You are still burning gasoline except it’s radioactive gasoline.
Is your proposal basically to burn away nuclear waste?
No. It’s to disperse it.
The main problem is the safety and handling of such radioactive waste.
It was very much not meant as a serious proposal.
How would this reduce carbon emissions?
Do you want such a substance sitting in your vehicle, garage, gas station with high traffic, etc
No. It’s to disperse it.
It was very much not meant as a serious proposal.
Okay good. The joke was lost on me, I thought this was a serious post. Didn’t expect it in AskScience.
Well it’s serious in that I would like to know how radioactive 2 million kilograms of nuclear waste mixed into 500 billion liters of gasoline would be.
I guess it’s 4 milligrams per liter. So a grain of sand per liter. My car is in the garage with a 40 liter gas tank. So 40 gains of sand worth of nuclear waste. How dangerous is that? Is it like evacuate the neighborhood, or is it don’t plan any long road trips.
I’m not sure why you think dispersing nuclear waste into our environment instead of isolating it is a good idea.
If it’s just a thought experiment from a mathematical / chemical perspective, maybe someone else would like to take on the question and do the math.
From a sociological and logistical perspective, it’s just not gonna happen. Pretty sure people’s tolerance for radioactive materials anywhere near them is zero. There isn’t any amount of radioactivity / danger that is considered socially acceptable.
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What if we, come on guys I’m serious, what if we mixed it with bourbon?
2.5 million barrels per year x 200 liters per barrel = 500 million liters
So about 1000 times smaller volume than gasoline. So 1000 gains of sand worth per liter.
