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https://gizmodo.com.au/2023/06/the-ussr-sprinkled-more-than-2500-nuclear-generators-across-the-countryside/>
"Ah, the USSR. It was a strange place with strange ideas. Ideas such as
planting unprotected mini nuclear power sources into inhospitable and
hard-to-reach areas. I mean, nothing should go wrong as long as the government
always exists to maintain them, right?
Welcome to the world of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators or RTGs. It’s a
piece of nuclear history I only recently learned about and thought I should
bring this whole new horror to your attention as well. These things are just
kind of rolling around famously stable Russia, and it seems like it should be a
cause for concern.
RTGs are not nuclear reactors, nor are they “nuclear batteries.” Rather they
work by converting the heat caused by radioactive decay into electricity. Due
to the dangerous nature of the materials used however, countries like America
only use RTGs in applications such as space exploration. Voyager, Cassini and
New Horizons uses RTGs for power, as do the Mars rovers Perseverance and
Curiosity. These probes however, use expensive plutonium-238 as their power
sources and we launch them far the hell away from us.
The USSR though? Nah. It’s going to use super cheap, super radioactive
Strontium-90 instead, though later, smaller RTGs used equally cheap Caesium-137
or Cerium-144. These three isotopes all have one thing in common; they’re all
the products of spent nuclear fission. In other words, waste. The terrestrial
Beta-M RTG is about 1.5 meters wide and 1.5 meters tall and weight about one
metric ton, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The entire
unit put out about between 1 and 1000 watts (quite the spread) and had a
working life of 10 to 20 years."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
