New Cost Estimates

The cost of the program has been reviewed. The cost of each individual cannon round is now estimated to be about $20,000 each. This put the total cost of moving all 1,000,000 tons of nuclear waste off the earth closer to $100 billion. But at the same time the Government has recently re-estimated the potential cost of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository as being closer to $92 billion; but that only includes a little more than a 100,000 metric tons of metallic wastes. So the Nuclear Waste Cannon is becoming the best alternative to what to do with the rapidly accumulating pile of hazardous nuclear waste material.

STATUS UPDATE 16 APRIL 2009

I continued to update the Phase I Plan for the development of the Nuclear Waste Cannon (NWC). I also published a new logo on the www.buildnwc.org and on this blog. I had to learn how to use INKSCAPE (a free vector drawing program) in the process of fine tuning the logo.

I also continued to research sources of information on the history of the cannon. A key report was developed by MIT in 1980 that asserted that the NWC was not only feasible but would be economical, at least for the amount of nuclear waste identified at that time. The MIT projectile, if launched from sea level would burn off about a third of its weight in ablation of the nose cone. Our projectile would be launched from about 19,000 foot altitude if we can use Mount Chimborazo in Equador; this should reduce the need for such an extensive ablation shield.

Status Update 15 Mar 2009

Made more progress on the detailed Program Plan. It was obvious that the Program had to be split into three Phases. Phase I would get the basic development accomplished and provide an initial operating capability. Phase II would do the reliability and accuracy testing needed to ensure that the cannon could safely launch nuclear waste projectiles. Phase III would be the transition into full operation. Have a pretty good handle on Phase I schedule and a preliminary estimate of cost. But still have a lot of fine tuning to do. Also a new logo has been introduced; not exactly spectacular be should get the point across. Have posted the new logo on this site and on the cannon program site.