Nah, Dad said it would be okay.

Would that not be just as bad as shooting it in to space?

You have the reasons here: https://youtu.be/Us2Z-WC9rao

I gotcha. It's just it's not like humanity has never had incredible engineering feats when needed.

It will be interesting to see what does eventually replace rockets.

Maybe having planes carry things into low altitude orbit and take off from there.

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Would you rather have a drum of nuclear waste sitting in a bunker somewhere deep underground, isolated by layers upon layers of radiation-absorbing material, or floating above your head like a nuclear sword of damocles?

Laments about stupid human bullshit aside, it's no easy engineering feat.

An aboveground version would mean miles of electrified track exposed to the elements; assuming constant acceleration, you'd quickly reach speeds where a single nick or bump would be catastrophic.

A hyperloop or shielded underground version is plausible, but that's miles of tunneling - and unless you want to roll the dice on some retractable wing business, it'd need to be a wide tunnel.

And that's not even getting into property/territory.

Because as unlikely as a failure is, the consequences of one would be horrendous. If it failed at high altitude it would be far worse than fukushima or tschernobyl, it's simply not worth the risk

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Bonus points if we store it on land or underground: if reprocessing becomes cost effective we can go back and grab the waste for new fuel

Like a rail system, right? Not on a mountain but straight up

Why oh why don't people make investments like that? Space travel isnt going anywhere.

Realistically, if you wanted to go pure electro-mechanical, you could build a giant ramp up the side of the Rockies and chuck a plane off it.

Unfortunately, high-velocity speed bumps have the same effect regardless of whether or not rockets are involved... nobody would want to shotgun radioactive waste across the country.

The United States creates munitions from spent nuclear rods and our military uses it overseas. It’s much cheaper than shooting it into space!

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1. Nuclear waste is valuable. It can be recycled into more nuclear fuel.
2. Currently no industrial work is done in space, it's too expensive. Space stations and satelites are used only for research,

Going to the sun is very difficult. Escaping the solar system or dropping it into Jupiter would be easier

I still cannot believe the best method to go really fast is a bomb.

There has to be another way.

Attach engines to the container and send it to sun

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Or an ACME rubber band. Meep meep.