This uranium ain't depleted. This is reactor fuel scattered as dust accross whole cities, poor Bukhara is gonna develop green lung.
Yes, but he was responding to me saying that the main problem with uranium is that it is crazy toxic.
That's why DU is only a heavy metal toxicity concern.
The toll of depleted uranium in places like Serbia and Iraq where lots of it was used is famously understudied, so I am not sure we can really say that the DU is a minimal concern compared to more radioactive uranium.
And my point remains, the Soviets were more scared of the chemical toxicity of the elephant's foot than they were of the radioactivity of it.
I am not convinced that flushing hot uranium dust in the stratosphere is a minimal concern.
Thousands to tens of thousands of stuff is also an issue because it's still highly active and now lasts so long that you can't expect you will be around to keep an eye on it.
The thing about radioactive material that is still worryingly radioactive thousands or tens of thousands of years later is that it isn't very radioactive.
Like, with nuclear waste, the unburned uranium wouldn't be an issue if it were more dilute. But since nuclear fuel is rich in uranium, the relatively low radioactivity of stuff like U235 adds up to a mild worry.
You can carry vastly less propellant if you execute the same missions
Based on that sort of logic, we shouldn't develop antimatter drives to spread Communism to Alpha Centauri. After all, enough chemical rockets could do the job.
If you ask me, a Mars program that costs 300 billion Euros is a big improvement over a Mars program that costs 3 trillion Euros.
Why are people worrying about polluting the atmosphere with the radiation? Even if something bad happened with one of our rockets, the impact would not be significant. This sounds like people being scared of anything and everything that has the word "nuclear" in it.
Because dispersing atomized uranium in the stratosphere, as will happen during the normal operation of Chelomei's rocket, isn't something where we can control where it falls, thus it has higher political risk.
If the damage was something we could contain in a sacrifice zone, I would oppose the design less.
It will also involve a long development time and a high degree of technical risk for an underwhelming payload capacity though, which is much more of a big deal to me.
IMO we need to prioritize speed here. Even starting on developing a metholox super booster would be faster as developing a chemical rocket is something we just have more experience with.
People should stop being worried about pollution in general. It is the 1970s not the 2020s. Holding back progress "for the environment" means we cannot transition to clean forms of energy in the future. I said this before but if Moscow is not a pollution ridden city by the end of the decade, it would be a disaster of gigantic proportions.
Pollution is a drag on economic efficiency. The reason why we need to accept more pollution to develop is not because pollution is OK because it is the 70s. Pollution is straightforwardly slowing our development. But we have to live with that because we're playing a bunch of Bolsheviks who haven't figured out how to account for the costs we are inflicting on ourselves but still need to grope our way to a better economy anyway based on vibes and gut feelings.
Regards,
fasquardon
