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NASA Restarts Plutonium Production
Celarent Darii writes "In what looks like good news for the American Space program, NASA has restarted production of plutonium. According to the article, after the closure of Savannah Rivers reactor NASA purchased plutonium from Russia, but since 2010 this was no longer possible. The native production of plutonium is a step forward for the space program to achieve the energy density for long term space exploration."
Maybe if NASA is really good Santa will bring them some plutonium.
Thanks Congress, for letting DoE and NASA do what they both agreed on. You're the best.
And if space exploration doesn't work out anymore we can always get into arms dealing.
It's so they can go back to 1955.
My first thought upon reading the summary was that if the Savannah River Site is closed, where are they making the new plutonium?
The answer, according to TFA, is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'm sure they'll say if solar isn't good enough, we should use (solar) wind power :P
If the vehicle burns up on launch or explodes at a low altitude there goes the county, launch facility, what have you.
If it burn up in the upper atmosphere perhaps world wide cancer rates double or there goes any thing where the jet stream stears the fallout event for the next 6 months or so. So just saying... great for the space program though... parse... parse... ; )
if Iran will impose sanctions on the United States...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Am I wrong in thinking the UK has a plutonium stockpile it really doesn't know what to do with? Simply not juicy enough?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21505271
jh
Wait this reminds me of something from XKCD.
http://xkcd.com/1162/
Or we could just use it to power a time machine...
.... make up your mind?
You used to produce Plutonium and you saw it was good. But then man got greedy and raced upward to the skies and eat from the forbidden fruit. And complicated-gdp-involving-economy-formula was not happy and it convinced you that it was bad. And Plutonium was no more, Savannah Rivers dropped the Rivers and became a p0rn5tar and the fallen from grace NASA purchased plutonium from Russia. Now there is what looks like good news, the saviour will be born, the native plutonium-producer child of NASA. A step forward for the space program to achieve the energy density for long space exploration. After a jump backward, sort of.
I wish we just got rid of the jumps backward.
We can just start reprocessing existing spent fuel and recover the material we need from that?
We will actually kill multiple birds with this... First, you get the material you wanted. Second, you don't create any new nuclear waste in the process, though it will change forms some and get somewhat smaller. Third, you can create new fuel assemblies and actually use the remaining fuel that is just sitting in pools of water right now. Not to mention that it will actually do something about the used fuel assemblies that are just sitting around waiting for something to happen.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"I'm sure that in 1985, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 1955, it's a little hard to come by."
"Now we can go.......back to the Future."
At least we won't have to buy it from the Libyans any more. It's tough to get enough plutonium to reach 1.21 Jiggawatts at 88mph!
is Plutonium still considered an atom?
repost to correct typo:
The Pu in the fuel rods is not the right isotope, it is almost all Pu239 (U238 + neutron = Pu239, [after a stage as Np239]). NASA needs Pu238. What Pu238 is in there would be a real bear to separate from the Pu239 (more difficult than the separation of U235 from U238 because the mass difference is less).
Oh no! It looks like the US government is planning to make weapons of mass destruction! We need to get UN sanctions enacted to ensure that NASA's production of plutonium doesn't begin which could cause the US to stockpile nuclear weapons...
For the folks who don't know, we are talking about plutonium 238. This has a half live of 88 years so decays rapidly and produces a fair amount of heat. Using thermocouples this can be used to generate power with no moving parts. The decay route is alpha particles which are fairly easy to shield against. Your favorite bomb material plutonium 239 has a half life of 24000 years which leaves it safer to handle but not useful for thermoelectric generation
We didn't stop producing plutonium just because it wasn't economically feasible (when did that stop the government from doing anything) -- the history of plutonium in the United States has been littered with accidents and costly, multi-decade cleanup projects that cost billions of dollars. See Rocky Flats, et al.
Sorry, just had to get that out of my system.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The isotope of PU used by NASA is not the type you make bombs from. I guess you could freak people out by spreading some radioactive material with a 'dirty bomb' - but basically, dirty bombs are a psychological weapon more than an actual hazard - they get people to panic and hurt themselves. They don't do much or any direct damage.
They type NASA uses won't fission (which is what you need for a nuclear mushroom-cloud, city destroying type explosion). It only decays, and as it decays, it produces a lot of heat and radiation (which, in a spacecraft, gets converted to heat also). NASA uses the heat to create electric power using a device called an RTG - Radioisotope thermal generator, which directly converts heat to electricity without any turbines (although, much less efficiently than a steam or gas turbine, but that's not a big concern for NASA).
How long until we have Nemesisium or Nemecesium?
1g of Pu-238 produces .5 watts, which is really useful for long-lasting portable devices. There are some early pacemakers running from Pu-238 that are still operational.
For example, a few grams of Pu-238 could power an iPhone for a century without ever recharging...
(but would cost tens of thousands of dollars..)
...but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=lftr+Plutonium-238
But US laws exists to prevent developing the technology created in the 70s in the US.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I had heard they had less than 30 Kgs left and it took at least 5 kgs to run the older style RTGs. The newer Stirling RTGs increase efficiency some.
Plus the cost at $4M a kilo was becoming significant.
I thought Savannah Rivers was a pRon star.
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
NASA didn't produce plutonium. DoE's Oak Ridge, TN facility did. NASA just issued the press release. NASA is good at that.
So first we hear about funding problems at NASA.
Now we hear about NASA producing plutonium. So how are they planning on funding this plutonium operation? Hopefully it isn't by selling it on the internet*** to raise money ;^)
** Yes, you can actually buy radioactive isotopes on the internet. For example, from these guys here. Of course these guys don't sell plutonium, so NASA would be able to have a monopoly on that ;^)
If I were a certain show off in Iran, I would openly communicate to the Satin's of the West; that Iranian Plutonium is not some mickey mouse pop off. And that Iran offers better rates than NASA can get from any other Satin selling the stuff. Just a thought...
Duh.
The Stirling RTG uses moving parts which are not required with a standard RTG. Seems like, for decades-long missions like Voyager, additional moving parts just add another potential failure point.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.