I found a similar question here before:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ze6b2/eli5_why_cant_spent_fuel_rods_from_nuclear/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ze6b2/eli5_why_cant_spent_fuel_rods_from_nuclear/)
However the answer to that question is that nuclear fuel rods are too dangerous. I am thinking about waste Plutonium as a byproduct from Uranium fission specifically. Surely if they are being used for spaceprobes where no humans are around then it would be a lot safer?
In: Engineering
It’s the wrong sort of plutonium. Pu-238 has a half-life of 88 years. It decays so fast that the heat produced makes lumps of it glow orange.
But waste plutonium is mostly Pu-239, with a half-life of 24k years. Not a useful source of heat for RTGs.
It can. In the US most power reactors don’t produce much plutonium, by design, but if you have a reactor that produces PU-238 then you can use that. NASA gets theirs from dedicated production in Oak Ridge.
The danger is during launch; it’s not very likely that any given rocket will blow up, especially the very large expensive ones used for launching the large probes that use RTGs, but *if* it blows up during launch you have the potential to scatter plutonium over a wide area. The RTG itself is supposed to be really robust and do its best to keep everything contained but there’s always some risk.
Unless you really need an RTG, solar is much safer.
Latest Answers