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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why There Are No Nuclear Airplanes

There was an enormous amount of fooferall around nuclear-powered satellites being flown out of Cape Canaveral, and the potential fallout on the general public if a rocket were to fail with such a payload.

Then people just stopped talking about it, and we launch nuclear shit all the time.

I still think we should package our nuke waste into rockets and shoot them at the Sun. But yeah... those rockets have to fly over someone's house on their way out of the atmosphere...





Devac  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
kleinbl00  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Naaah that's RTGs and we use 'em less these days. They're primarily useful on interplanetary shit and we've done a lot less interplanetary shit since the '70s.

rthomas6  ·  2130 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Other than the obvious risks of containment failure, is there any reason we shouldn't use these for on-grid electricity generation? It seems safer than nuclear reactors to me, and provides almost constant power. I'm assuming they cost a lot?

kleinbl00  ·  2130 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why yes! Yes there are.

(1) They're about as inefficient a reactor structure as you could ask for.

(2) They slowly turn from nuclear fuel to nuclear waste before your eyes.

(3) The more power they put out the more radioactive they are.

Compare and contrast - the RTGs on Voyagers 1 and 2 weigh 38 kilos and put out 157W. Good thing it's got three; that's 120 kilos of generator (13 kilos of plutonium - about 1/5th of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima) for 460W. On the other hand, the solar panels on Juno weigh in at 340 kilos but in earth orbit they put out 12,000 watts. Tweaked to work out there around Jupiter they still put out about 500W.

goobster  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    ...and we've done a lot less interplanetary shit since the '70s.

le sigh...

kleinbl00  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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