Radioactive Trash Threatens Satellites

Clouds of junk orbiting the Earth are made of radioactive debris leaking from dead, nuclear-powered Russian spy satellites, The New York Times reported today.

Experts say the atomic debris poses no danger to humans but could damage working satellites and force engineers to add more shielding to new spacecraft.

“We’re worried about it,” said Donald J. Kessler, senior scientist for orbital debris studies at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “It looks like it could be pretty bad.”

The episode drives home the dangers posed by dead satellites, shattered rocket stages and millions of other bits of manmade debris that speed around the Earth. The cloud is expected to grow, it’s unclear by how much.

What’s leaking from the nuclear reactors is a radioactive and highly corrosive coolant, a mixture of sodium and potassium in liquid metal form, but the danger is the speed at which the drops are traveling.