Author Topic: Dept. of Energy to restart plutonium production for NASA space missions  (Read 138957 times)

Offline grythumn

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And american slang term for job well done. I think your british term is Bang Up Job or Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!

I believe mikes was commenting on the greengrocers' apostrophe, not the word itself.

And to wander back on topic: The "revive" language in some of the articles sounds odd. From what I understand, they're not reprocessing it to remove the U-234, just mixing in some of the purer PU-238...

-R C

Offline Blackstar

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This information was presented to MEPAG a few weeks ago and the CAPS meeting last week. I have been waiting for some updated slides that I could post here. But it's good to see that the FoxNews article is accurate.

Originally, NASA planned on retiring the MMRTG and transitioning over to the ASRG, which uses less plutonium. At least for now NASA is keeping the MMRTG production capability open. I don't know if that has to do with the Mars 2020 rover (which requires an MMRTG), or if it is a longer-term issue.

The MMRTG has advantages and disadvantages:

-costs money to maintain that capability
-it's heavy (built for rugged ground use, not ideal for orbiters)
-it is totally reliable
-it is robust in high radiation environments like Europa

As for the Pu-238 production issue, I heard a little bit more about the politics behind it. Man, it's convoluted. Can't go into all of it here, but I'll say that the "energy density" argument mentioned in the article is what apparently finally carried the day. The good thing is that production will start soon and NASA is in control because they're paying for it.

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