[ExI] nuclear fusion

Amara Graps amara at amara.com
Wed Mar 26 19:01:18 UTC 2008


aiguy at comcast.net aiguy at comcast.net :
>My understanding is that the nuclear warheads only have a certain shelf
>life before the half-life of the nuclear warheads becomes degraded
>enough that it has to be replaced.

Reference, please.

(Plutonium-238 half-life = 87 years)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238

>But there is no reason that we could not go to the Russian's

They have (what NASA has currently is from the Russians) and they did.
New Horizons to Pluto has Russian plutonium in its RTGs, for example.
Russia is the primary source today, and the Russians say they are almost
out (except for that bit they sold to the Indian Space Agency ;-)).
FWIW, what I wrote previously came directly from the mouth of NASA
Associate Administrator 5 days ago.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado



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