Slashdot Mirror
Rover Fuel Came From Russian Nuke Factory, But Supplies Running Low
gbrumfiel writes "The Curiosity rover will soon start rolling, and when it does, it will be running on gas from a Russian weapons plant. Slate has the story of how the plutonium-238 that powers the rover came from Mayak, a Soviet-era bomb factory. Mayak made the fuel through reprocessing, a chemical process used to make nuclear warheads that also polluted the surrounding environment. After the cold war ended, the Russians sold the spare Pu-238 to NASA, which put some of it into Curiosity. Now, the Russian supply is running low and NASA hopes to restart Pu-238 production on U.S. soil (They're planning on making less of a mess this time)."
One interesting way of dealing with nuclear waste: reprocess fuel a few times, extracting Pu-238 and friends (those pesky "have to keep waste sealed forever to prevent hyper-squirrels in the year 3,001,000 from being irradiated" elements) and launching an army of deep space probes. But then there's the waste stream from reprocessing...
You want to nuke Russian factories? Just because of something to do with PU238 Riot?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"Slashdot: Where tyrrany, repression and genocide are cool as long as the perpertrators suck up to Assange in public."
Indeed.
And no geek here seems to want to address actual real news, such as
Maximum Leader Obama's Economy: Tech layoffs hit 3-year high of 51,529 in first
No, the real news today is naked Republicans and "legitimate rape".
Priorities anyone?