NASA Returns Images of Frozen Worlds Enceladus and Pluto (nasa.gov)

MarkWhittington writes: This past week, NASA provided a look at two frozen worlds far out into the solar system. Cassini, currently orbiting Saturn, flew by the frozen moon Enceladus and provided the closest views yet of its north pole. New Horizons, hurtling deep into the Kuiper belt at the edge of the solar system, returned a fresh image of the icy region of Pluto known as the Sputnik Planum.

Comments

Want to see more of these probes?

[blindseer]

To get these probes to work in deep space requires a power source that lasts for decades in dim light, while weighing next to nothing. No chemical fuel will work, solar panels won't either. These things are nuclear powered. Problem is that we have a shortage of the plutonium-238 that makes these probes viable.

Pu-238 is unique in that it produces easily shielded alpha radiation and all kinds of heat, and does so for decades. Pu-238 is different from the Pu-239 used in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, in fact it's worthless for bombs. To get more Pu-238 we need nuclear reactors. Preferably we'd like reactors that make Pu-238 in greater quantities than Pu-239. We can get those in liquid fluoride thorium reactors, or LFTRs.

LFTRs are a great technology, while producing power from what is now worthless thorium we also get valuable radioisotopes for medicine and industry. Most designs for LFTRs include means to prevent plutonium from being produced, because just saying "plutonium" in the vicinity of many Americans causes them to wet themselves. If designed to allow production of plutonium it would be nearly pure Pu-238.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Cheap power, no "carbon footprint", valuable radioisotopes, all from a rock that is right now thrown away by miners because no one wants to buy it. Well, no one wants to buy thorium because the US federal government has deemed it worthless. The only thing keeping us from this near ideal power source is the United States Department of Energy.

Some might ask, what about the radioactive waste? Well if done right there would be next to none. Whatever is radioactive is typically very valuable, if it's not fuel then it's valuable for medicine or industry. Problem with the radioactive "waste" we have now is that it's in a form that is difficult to process, all the good stuff is all mixed together in a way that is hard to separate. Well if you melt it down, burn off the stuff that is useful as fuel, then what is left is the really valuable stuff like Pu-238. Not only would LFTR produce much less waste than current reactors, it can do so while burning the "waste" from the reactors we've been using for the last 50 years.

We're seeing candidates running for public office going around looking for votes. When they ask you want you want tell them you want to see NASA get the Pu-238 they need for deep space probes, and that LFTR looks like a good place to get it.