It’s not a good idea, but it could be done very safely. Personally, I think nuclear power is simply to expensive to be particularly useful going forward, but IMO waste is a smaller issue than generally perceived.
Sure, you would encase them in something that could survive reentry or detonation of the rocket. Choosing a launch location and trajectory for easy recovery is also possible.
However, paying 1,000+$/lb to get rid of Nuclear waste is extremely expensive. Simply storing it in a pond for ~120 years and the stuff gets vastly less radioactive as short half-life material decays. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years so you get 6% as much of them and essentially everything with a shorter half life is gone. Plutonium-238 has a longer half life of 87 years, but you also get rid of ~2/3 of that.
You still have almost off the Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,000 years, but that stuff is not nearly as nasty and can be reprocessed for fuel. Further, reprocessing becomes cheaper after waiting for it to cool down.
Sure, you would encase them in something that could survive reentry or detonation of the rocket. Choosing a launch location and trajectory for easy recovery is also possible.
However, paying 1,000+$/lb to get rid of Nuclear waste is extremely expensive. Simply storing it in a pond for ~120 years and the stuff gets vastly less radioactive as short half-life material decays. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years so you get 6% as much of them and essentially everything with a shorter half life is gone. Plutonium-238 has a longer half life of 87 years, but you also get rid of ~2/3 of that.
You still have almost off the Plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,000 years, but that stuff is not nearly as nasty and can be reprocessed for fuel. Further, reprocessing becomes cheaper after waiting for it to cool down.
PS: Plutonium-238, Strontium-90 and cesium-137 can also be used for space probes via: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_...