Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear 'Asteroids' Due In A Few Hundred Years
easyCoder writes "In this space.com article, it mentions a RORSAT satellite that has been leaking radioactive coolant, leaving little droplets of it in orbit around our planet. However, further down, it also mentions this, quoted here for maximum impact: 'After a RORSATs tour-of-duty was over, the reactor's fuel core was shot high above Earth into a "disposal orbit." Once at that altitude the power supply unit would take several hundred years before it reentered the Earth's atmosphere.' Wow. So ... our great-grandchildren can expect a lovely day, partly cloudy with the occasional nuclear reactor plummeting down from outer space."
By then Skynet will be in control, let it be the "Machines" problem.
...wildly positive articles that Linux is just about to break big and take over the desktop from Microsoft. ;)
....in a couple of hundred years, I'd be most depressed if they can't deal with a small nuclear reactor falling back to earth.
I mean we're meant to be progressing in our knowledge and abilities, no?
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
Not that it matters much what an asteroid is made of when it's landing on you.
Boy, I'm sure glad I gave up that career in space flight and instead opted for becoming a laid-off IT guy. And my guidance counselor said I couldn't make a good decision...
Mom says my
A little radiation won't kill anyone. Sheesh. The amount of radiation released by the NaK coolant drops (especially after being vaporized on hitting the atmosphere) will be negligible.
Once again, the media makes a big deal out of a little thing.
(Note that this doesn't excuse the Soviets' lack of foresight on the reactor. Then again, they did manage Chernobyl...)
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Do a search for "Cosmos 954" It still had its power source when it hit Canada in 1978. And yeah, I'm not worried either. The stuff spread over a wide area, and as my Dad was tought in the '60s, the solution to pollution is dilution.
Yea, because the only thing that comes out of the current Solid Rockets we use is rainbows and perfume...
We do not inherit the world from our parents; we borrow it from our children
- American Indian Proverb
You have to remember the enviroment that produced this mess.
The former soviets had a very cavalier attitude towards radioactivity. Part of the problem was the extreme pressure they felt to keep up with western technology.
The soviets have radioactive waste everywhere. Not just Chernobyl, but across the continent.
It really is a severe problem. There are also over 40,000 barrels of waste in the Barents sea that need to be cleaned up before it kills the fisheries.
This doesn't mention all the nuclear accidents that they had that released radioactivity in the enviroment. Many of which were never published or covered up. The only reason we learned about Chernobyl is because fallout reached Sweden.
BTW, the Chernobyl sarcophagus is crumbling, and threatens to expose the radioactive core once again, unless western nations fund some fix. So that mess is not over yet.
"Radioactive Mess" would be Russia's middle name if it had one.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Of course. Otherwise you would have used a better word than "infected" to describe radiation sickness.
;)
As long as we are not talking about things like Plutonium 238, I think we are still safe.
These droplets will quickly burn as soon as they enter in the atmosphere since Na and K are highly reactive. Both the sodium and potassium will absorb CO2/H20 becoming small crystals of inoffensive carbonates. The most dangerous compound coming from this Na/K coolant might be Argon-39 (released from the radioactive Sodium-24).
Now, Argon-39 has a beta-decay mode, with around 300 years half-life. First, beta-decay is one of the least dangerous types of decay. For example, tritium is much more dangerous than Argon-39 since it has a half-life of only 10 years. But tritium is used everywhere today, in exit signs for example, or other "glow in the dark" toys. You can order this stuff on the Internet today...
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
> In Societ Russia, women like YOU!
Or...
In Soviet Russia, women LIKE YOU!*
(* Only with more facial hair)
Kid: How long do we have? ....
Professor: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Kid: What you say!!
Professor: You are on the way to destruction.
Professor: Ha Ha Ha Ha
Kid: Take off every 'Zig'!!
Kid: You know what you doing.
Kid: Move 'Zig'.
Kid: For great justice.
See? The future's fine, we have Zig.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
31 kg of 90% U235.
n t/rorsat.htm
Reference: http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/russia/military/sigi
How much material are we talking?
According to "Der rote Orbit" by Harro Zimmer, a book on the Soviet space program based on data released in the 1990s: There is about 940 kg of highly enriched uranium and more than 15 tons of radioactive material. The sattelites will stay about 600 years in orbit before coming down. Argon-39, mentioned in the article, will still be around then.
One exception is Kosmos 1900. On this RORSAT mission the core ejection was done later than usual due to a technical problem. Since the orbit was already very low then, the core was shot to an altitude of about 750 km, where it will only last about 100 years.
Will this be a major event to the earth, or will the upper atmosphere just shrug and eat it up?
This is unclear. There were two incidents in the RORSAT history where the reactor core re-entered Earth's atmosphere. Kosmos 1402 did not leave a radioactive trace while the infamous Kosmos 954 spacecraft certainly did.
OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
However, argon is a noble gas that does not combine chemically with anything, so long-term exposure from absorption into the human body is not exactly a big issue. It also forms a small but detectable proportion (about 1%) of the Earth's atmosphere, so it will be diluted by a factor of billions or trillions to one.
Sodium of course is highly reactive. I assume that it's the K (potassium?) that decays into the sodium as Na = sodium already... nuclear science is not my strong suit unfortunately. Upon hitting the high atmosphere, sodium will combine rapidly, probably with hydrogen (NaH) or Oxygen (NaO2/Na2O/Na2O2) none of which are used by the human body... may be a problem if it recombines, but again we're talking minute quantities relatively speaking.
The coolant is all in the form of liquid droplets which will be showering down over the earth over a period of hundreds of years. To be honest I can't see what the big deal is here. Yes, there's radiation showering down, but these are *droplets*, they're not going to smack you in the eye - they will break up probably before they hit the stratosphere, let alone the troposphere.
The net effect will be an increase in background radiation levels too small to measure.
The original article focuses on the hazards of the droplets as space junk... which to me seems sensible. As an earthbound radiation source these don't figure. As space junk they present not only a collision hazard but a radioactive one.
Just in case you couldnt be bothered to track the flaw in this guy's argument, let me make it easy for you. His claim is that there will be a massive "die-off" when we run out of oil, and compares it to biological systems that face resource restriction. The flaw is that oil is not our only source of energy! Coal and natural gas can easily make up the energy differences and will last us quite some time still, so we arent going to go into energy starvation. Certainly there will be a change in the economy, as alternate fuels [note not energy sources] start to compete economically with gas as prices rise. So while the future is not all sweetness and light, its also not certain doom.
Anything that has a halflife of 17 million
years isn't going to be particularly radioactive.
It will release a particle every now and then but
unless you build your house and everything in it
from that material, you should probably be more
worried about natural radon gas emissions.
sigs are hazardous to your health
The posting of this article to Slashdot is FUD, pure and simple, as is most anti-nuclear propaganda. Radioactive material, like all other toxins, requires a certain concentration to be lethal. The danger is only to spacecraft, and that from collisions.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
If things like this are being handled so sloppily now, what else is being irresponsibly handled?
If it was nuclear and built by the Soviets, it was probably handled irresponsibly. NASA has *never* flown an automated reactor in orbit, and the deep space probes with RTGs (a passive power generation system that works by converting the heat generated by Plutonium into electricity) have nearly all had the RTG packaged in an indestructable black-box.
What's that? You were trying to blame the Americans for this? You didn't read the article? Oh. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's happened more than you might think. There are problems with those satellites that use nuclear reactors and those that use radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs). From memory...
As for those returning to Earth...
There have been a number of launch failures.
The coolant spills have been seen from some of the later Kosmos reactors which have ejected their cores, so it appears to be a shortcoming in the design of the eject mechanism. The first signs of leakage came from Kosmos 1900 in 1997 - this is also a Kosmos which has failed to send its reactor into a high-level disposal orbit. Having said that, some 14 Kosmos RORSATs did successfully eject their cores between the first flight of the design in 1980 and the suspension of the programme in 1988.
NASA and the Air Force have tracked a number of satellites that have begun to disintegrate after many years in orbit. The cause of this failure is completely unknown, but amongst the ones that are known to have failed are the US SNAPSHOT satellite - the first to be flown with a nuclear reactor in 1965 that began disintegrating in the late 1970s, and Nimbus VI, launched in 1975 which appears to have completely broken up.
Kosmos 1461 appears to have exploded in orbit for no readily apparent reason. Kosmos 1900 is also stuck in a lower orbit that intended and will fall back to Earth before the nominal 600 year period.
Finally, there was the RTG from Apollo 13 which should have powered its Lunar experimental station, but remained on the Lunar Module which acted as a lifeboat for the failed mission. The LM disintegrated in the atmosphere, the RTG appears to have survived and crashed into the West Pacific. No radiation was detected.
Best wishes,
Mike.
I've never seen someone compose a Slashdot post in Microsoft Word before (the broken 'smart quotes' gave you away).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Exactly. Worldwide impact would likely be on the same order as a new gigawatt coal facility coming online without modern emissions controlls. What all the anti-nuclear people seem to miss is that there are only a handfull of instances where nuclear power facilities released measurable amounts of radioactive material, yet coal power plants (the ones most likely to replace nuclear due to abundant reserves) pour out literally tons of radioactive material every year!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Uh no, as the chain reaction starts, the other atoms in the core gain an enormous amount of thermal kinetic energy and the core attempts to vapourise. If it disperses, neutrons are far less likely to hit a nucleus and produce further fission events. If this process is allowed to continue fissile material is physically removed from the path of the neutrons - so some fissile material would never undergo fission.
The outward expansion of the core is unstoppable, it always disassembles the core before the reaction can run to completion - a matter of microseconds. The objective must be to stop the outward expansion of the core for as long as possible by producing an inward pressure of equal or greater force. So modern weapons use a heavy metal tamper around the core to provide a lot of inertia against expansion, and a huge amount of implosion pressure to counteract the outward movement of the core material for as long as possible.
I did some checking, Little Boy was 1.3% efficient, Fat Man was 16% efficient. Apparently normal fission cores are limited to around 25% efficiency, larger ones might be up to 50% efficient. Some of the later US tests that used so-called levitated cores got efficiencies up to 35% - which is pretty damn impressive - in a horribly scary sort of way.
Best wishes,
Mike.