> For a vehicle that is on a one-way trip to Mars, and where the reactor will be brought online after it's out of Earth's orbit, this isn't a problem.
Polluting the new homeland from the start, eh?
Polluting the new homeland from the start, eh?
More seriously, we can afford to have a small amount of nuclear waste there, but we need to plan for it better than we have previously. First, document where it is and what it contains. Second, I don't know.
The correct response is reprocessing. Most of the "waste" generated by power reactors is actually still usable as fuel. It also eliminates the really long-lived stuff, so that the small amount of leftover waste only has to be kept stored for a much more manageable 500-1000 years.