Nuclear 'Asteroids' Due In A Few Hundred Years 589
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."
They are nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
Not that it matters much what an asteroid is made of when it's landing on you.
Re:A Few Hundred Years? (Score:3, Informative)
Since no one read the damn article... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't you mean meteoroids meteorites? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:don't you mean meteors? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't be the first one (Score:5, Informative)
Space Spam (Score:4, Informative)
And just as junk emails cause a threat to network connectivity, space junk can potentially damage future space missions. NASA constantly keeps its eye on the movements of these bits of space trash.
space.com [space.com] has a comprehensive list of space junk items, and who put them there.
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Re:Futurama (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Ob5thElement (Score:2, Informative)
Student: So when is this 'snake act' supposed to occur?
Archeologist: Well... if this is the 5, and this is the 1, every five thousand years.
Student: So... I've got some time....
Re:Just how much material are we talking about her (Score:5, Informative)
You can stand on a floor of strontium 90 every day and not really be affected (well, I think there are parts of your skin thin enough that the radiation will cause problems), breath a few particles of it and some Bad Things will happen.
I think the stuff talked about here make strontium 90 look good. Some of that stuff takes VERY little though yellow and magenta chains grant immunity to radiation (Ok, inside joke, govt labs use yellow and magenta plastic chains to rope off radioactive areas with no other explaination leaving you wondering what the actual contamination is from. Nothing like a 2 foot square hole in the hall in front of your office with one of those chains around the very edge of the hole).
Re:They are nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple-minded solution (Score:5, Informative)
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. [bbc.co.uk]
It really is a severe [upi.com] 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.
Re:A good example against nuclear powered * (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re:Ah yes... (Score:5, Informative)
A missile silo doesn't move around much, and it's hard to keep completely secret. The Soviets knew exactly where every one of them was and had several nukes pinpointed on each one.
In the oceans, however, are ships and submarines which also carry nuclear weapons. Ships do move around, and it's relatively easy to keep the movements of a ship at sea secret. The Soviets needed to know where the US was keeping its seaborne nuclear assets, so that they could be eliminated before they could launch in the event of World War 3. In addition to (IIRC) around half of the American arsenal, _all_ the British nukes and most of the French ones are on submarines.
I'd say the Soviets had a damn good reason to be keeping a close eye on the oceans.
Re:Ah yes... (Score:4, Informative)
This Soviet Union placed a series of radar-equipped ocean reconnaissance satellites, known as RORSATs in the west in low Earth orbit beginning in 1967. Employing powerful radars and working in pairs, they located and targeted U.S. ships for destruction by Soviet naval forces...
Re:Don't you mean meteoroids meteorites? (Score:5, Informative)
Incidentally "meteor" can refer either to the incandescence of a meteoroid burning up in the atmosphere or it can refer to the object itself (in which case it is a perfect synonym for "meteoroid").
a lot of Time heals all (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Whine, whine. (Score:5, Informative)
Going at a large velocity a 3inch diameter sphere of coolant will do some damage (possibly quite serious), and that's what has people worried. It certainly has the potential to change the orbit of one of the smaller satellites.
It's a Romanshka class reactor (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The hazard is to spacecraft, not us (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty low. To get a vapor pressure of 1 mm of mercury, you have to heat it to 355 C.
You could lift it if you were stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Reference: http://www.fas.org/spp/guide/russia/military/sigi
Many more nuclear satellites (Score:4, Informative)
Some numbers on the issue (Score:5, Informative)
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 [free-online.co.uk].
Re:Just how much material are we talking about her (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:The hazard is to spacecraft, not us (Score:4, Informative)
why this is hooey (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple-minded solution (Score:2, Informative)
Hrm, Finland is between Sweden and Russia. It came here first. We noticed and reported.
Damn, we are not THAT small country. Linus was born here!
PS. US has it's share of missing nuclear/chemical weapons also.
Re:why this is hooey (Score:2, Informative)
1) While oil is not our only source of energy, coal and natural gas CANNOT easily make up the energy difference. This is the point of the guy's argument.
2) The change in the economy will be far more consequential than you are imagining. This is actually obvious given that just about every aspect of the economy is heavily dependent on oil (energy), though sometimes indirectly.
3) I think you might be biased toward casting off the argument as 'bad science' because it is not reported in the mainstream media. I have researched 'peak oil' independently, and found to my own satisfaction that this guy is less paranoid than you might think.
Re:They'll be able to deal with it.... MAYBE (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Radioactive core (Score:3, Informative)
Lockheed just gave this talk at Penn State (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lets keep this a secret (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:don't you mean meteors? (Score:1, Informative)
They don't need to be meteorites today. Since they are expected to be meteorites in "A Few Hundred Years", I think that the term is appropriate.
By your logic, a car can not be called a car, because in the past (before assembly) it was only a bunch of parts. Try to get it insured under that definition.
Re:Lets keep this a secret (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lets keep this a secret (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike a chemical explosion, a nuclear explosion is rarely more than 10% efficient. Most of the fissionable material is not consumed in the nuclear reaction, instead it is vaporised into the environment. The vast majority of fissionable material ever used for explosions has been put into the atmosphere where it has gradually settled back to Earth.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Re:Lets keep this a secret (Score:5, Informative)
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 [nuclearweaponarchive.org], 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.
Re:Lets keep this a secret (Score:4, Informative)
So, good suggestion, but not practical.
Re:why this is hooey (Score:2, Informative)
While there may be a huge amount of oil potentially avaliable in tar sands, that doesn't mean that we'll ever be able to extract all it for use.
The Syncrude plant in Alberta currently requires the equivalent of 2 barrels of oil as input for every 3 barrels produced (using natural gas to fire the hot water extraction process). It also requires 2.5 barrels of water for every barrel produced. This is for the most accessable, strip mined sands. Production is no longer viable when energy inputs exceed energy produced and is limited by available of water supplies. These plants are also very expensive. The next-generation Syncrude plant is alreay several billion dollars over budget and still unfinished.Re:why this is hooey (Score:5, Informative)
In 2001 the world used 77 million barrels of oil a day. It's predicted that that number will reach almost 119 million barrels a day by 2025, so lets go with 100 million as a nice round number.
As was pointed out later in the thread, the canadian oil sands contain about 300 billion barrels of proven reserve, about as much as Saudi Arabia. So the largest known source of oil sands is about the same as the largest known source of conventional oil. Let's assume that this similarity continues, and that there are 1.2 trillion barrels of proven reserves of oil sands around the world to match the 1.2 trillion barrels of conventional oil we know about.
Usually proven reserves account for about 25% of the total amount of the oil in a field, the rest being economically unrecoverable with current technology. If we could magically recover all of it, the 2.4 trillion proven reserves of oil above would become almost 10 trillion barrels.
So at our proposed "current" rate of use the world would go through that amount of oil in about 273 years. A long time, but certainly not forever. If we imagine that for every source of oil we know about there are 9 other sources we haven't found or considered yet, ten times the amount estimated above, 100 trillion barrels, about 14 trillion tons of the stuff, we'd still go through it all in less than 3000 years.
If you wish you can argue about how likely or unlikely it is that the human race will live that long, how likely that we'll still be using oil for that long (much more likely with the magical 100% recovery process) and whether or not the usage would remain stable (if anything it would most likely increase, if every country became at least as developed as the US, world wide usage would increase to at _least_ 400 million barrels a day.) However the point is that even at our current usage we could eventually burn through any reasonable supply of oil you care to propose.
Claiming that the earth will never run out of oil, period, is simply untenable.