Vaguely true. They're concerned about a pad explosion or unexpected reentry
that could result in plutonium being scattered around the countryside.
Plutonium is an extremely toxic metal. 1 microgram will kill you damn quick.
Plus it's readily absorbed by tissue, which means everywhere you have a Pu
speck, you're irradiating tissue with ionizing radiation in a few centimeter
radius. Not good for a long term outlook.
Incidently, the tree huggers worries on this matter are not completely
unfounded. Because of launch weight issues, the shielding material is not
really designed to survive reentry.
--John
On Monday 12 May 2003 14:20 pm, chris wrote:
> From what I remember, those probes (and most (all?) other deep space
> probes, I
>
> >think), use a radioisotope decay generator for power. This is a
> >sub-critical-mass nuclear power plant; it uses the heat produced by a
> >near-critical lump of plutonium to generate electricity, rather then using
> >fission to produce heat to produce electricity.
>
> So is this the power supply all those whiney people were bitching about
> NASA trying to put into a Mars probe? They were all afraid the probe
> would explode during launch and be ground zero of a nuclear blast (or
> some other most likely vagely based on reality doomsday outcome activists
> are notorious for).
>
> -chris
> <http://www.mythtech.net>
Received on Mon May 12 2003 - 14:02:00 BST