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New Production of Plutonium 238
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "According to the New York Times (login req, but you can google for it as well), the Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war. Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory. Officials denied that any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space, but rather would power 'secret espionage devices.' Plutonium 238 has no central role in nuclear arms. Instead, it is valued for its steady heat, which can be turned into electricity. Nuclear batteries made of it are best known for powering spacecraft that go where sunlight is too dim to energize solar cells. For instance, they now power the Cassini probe exploring Saturn and its moons."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/politics/27nuke. html?ex=1277524800&en=d2a4c8d306596edf&ei=5090&par tner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Sounds like this is used to power Radioisotope Thermal Generators. this is a very good thing; we need more experience with RTGs to power spacecraft, both nearby (spy satellites) and far (science missions). It's the only power we can generate when we're beyond Mars orbit (solar cells are much less effective the farther you get from the Sun.
My wife brought up the pollution aspect - not from polluting outer space (I explained already about the fact that space is far more radioactive than the plutonium is, we're not 'polluting' space). Rather, the Hanford (Washington State USA) processing facility created / processed lots of plutonium during the cold war and ended up creating massive environmental damage with radionucleides in the groundwater, soil, etc.
Where exactly is this processing plant and is the DOD allowing the EPA to supervise environmental maintenance/protection?
(Note: I don't care where it is; if telling me hurts security that's fine I don't need to know, but I don't want this kind of a plant showing up next door to me without someone having filed an environmental impact statement).
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Nuclear power really won't take you very far unless you use breeder reactors. About 40 years by some estimates.
By using breeder reactors, we can have up to 40,000 years of energy.
Breeder reactors let you take U238, which is mostly useless for reactors, and turn it into Pu238, which is a great source of energy.
Maybe this is also practice for a larger project down the road.
Secret Missions? Come on, we all know that plutonium is the perfect fuel to produce the 1.21 Jigawatts that our flux capacitors need.
program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory
If we're running low, why not just buy some more from North Korea?
330lbs sounds like a lot, but its probably about the size of a 12 pack of coke.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
330 pounds of plutonium occupies a volume of about 7.5 liters.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
This plutonium is sorely needed to aid in our national defense. Thanks to treaties signed by some nancy pants presidents of the past we are only down to a measly 4,000 or so ICBMs.
What, no Mr. Fusion?
rooooar
So what it sounds like is the goverment needs the plutonium for military applications, not for NASA since they can already get Pu-238 from Russia for NASA missions.
AccountKiller
Wikipedia article here
Plutonium 239 is the one used in nuclear weapons and some nuclear power plants. Pu238 has a halflife of 88 years, and the decay mode is fission (so it outputs quite a lot of energy) or alpha emission. Quoth the wiki:
"The plutonium isotope 238Pu is an alpha emitter with a half-life of 87 years. These characteristics make it well suited for electrical power generation for devices which must function without direct maintenance for timescales approximating a human lifetime. It is therefore used in RTGs such as those powering the Galileo and Cassini space probes; earlier versions of the same technology powered seismic experiments on the Apollo Moon missions.
238Pu has been used successfully to power artificial heart pacemakers, to reduce the risk of repeated surgery. It has been largely replaced by lithium-based batteries recharged by induction, but as of 2003 there were somewhere between 50 and 100 plutonium-powered pacemakers still implanted and functioning in living patients."
Those 238's before the Pu's are supposed to be superscripted, but slashdot doesn't think that's good enough, apparently.
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That's right. Other than for the benefits in powering espionage/space devices, this move could be laying the groundwork for full scale Pu238 production, to mix with Pu239 (from fast breeders), as a deterrent to the use of Pu239 for weapons. The world will need breeders soon, and neutralizing their potential for weapons use will be a priority.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Speaking of Grand Teton...do you know how the name translates into English?
Sorry, you're dead wrong.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"