Sending Plutonium to Pluto?
 

a'int that like sending coal to Newcastle?

goldarn NASA! wastin' my hard earned money when we could be sending ice to Eskimos :)

You'd think the protestors would be happy to get as much of the stuff off the planet as possible.

Yipe!

I think their concern was it wouldn't get off the planet. :eek:

I thought those guys were dicked up when they raised the same squawk about Cassini, and I haven't seen much to change that opinion. There are more immediate contamination concerns with the wrecks of the USS Thresher, USS Scorpion, and the Soviet November and Mike sinkings -- all in various parts of the Atlantic. For the Pacific, we have that sunken Golf SSB. I think there are still nuclear warheads down there, and guaranteed those still have plutonium. Any tritium would be mainly gone, as it's been through three or four half-lives.

The CNN.com article contains a couple of eyebrow-raising questionable statements. One is probably a typo: it'd be plutonium-239, not -238. 238 is regular uranium, the most stable/least unstable isotope, half life approximately the age of the Earth. That's right, this old world has about half the U-238 it started with down there in the core, and a lot more lead. The other is the 5000fps velocity figure for a "large-caliber rifle." No; large bore velocities are typically half that and even the fastest-stepping bullets around are small-bore critters of the .17 caliber type and are nearer 4000 fps than 5000, and then only at the muzzle -- lighter bullets slow down more swiftly from drag than heavier ones will.

This is politics, and they are banking on our ignorance -- not much to do with the reality of the matter.

I think the concern is more on the order of it getting only halfway off the planet.
:3_eyes: :nuke: :reaper:

Right UG. The first launch containing plutonium was questionned hard and made it into Project Censored's annual list of unreported stories. A large amount of alarm went up that NASA could poison the entire state of Florida if a Challenger-esque explosion happened. Someone finally did the math and said, no it wouldn't. But the math is rarely news-worthy. I think any panic over this is due to leftovers from the previous panic, where people heard the alarm but not the explanation. Although NASA is often a miserable failure, I'm thinkin' many engineers have anticipated the question and developed an answer and nobody much thinks to ask them. This happens often in news beacuse the general alarm is so much more interesting than the debunking.

For someone who claims in previous posts to be so intelligent, well then, UG intentionally posted lies. He posted lies because he is so intelligent as to know he was wrong. CNN was accurate. As usual, Urbane Guerilla uses partisan politics reasoning to criticize others.

Plutonium exists in many isotopes. 239 is weapons grade Plutonium. If Pu-239 was used as a battery for a New Horizon's satellite (as Urbane Guerilla so confidently proclaims), then Pu-239 would quickly degrade inside a warhead. Obviously, Pu-239 cannot be used as a spacecraft battery AND also be used in a nuclear weapon (such as Fat Boy). Urbane Guerilla - one with so much intelligence - would have obviously known that fact.

Pu-238 has long and often been used for batteries; being less stable and therefore producing energy in radiothermal generators. IOW CNN was correct. Therefore an 'always more intelligent' Urbane Guerilla lied. Something like 17 different known types of Plutonium exists including a most stable Pu-244.

Yes, there is Uranium 238 and there is Plutonium 238. A man intelligent enough to be officer material would have known that basic fact. Meanwhile UG would have you believe that all Plutonium was only 239.

Furthermore, an informed UG would have known that US Navy submarines use uranium for both propulsion and for nuclear missiles. Plutonium 239 was used for some Soviet missiles. But plutonium 239 is more difficult to isolate which is but one reason why uranium - not plutonium - is a preferred weapon grade material. UG claims that the Thresher (that had no weapons) and the Scorpion were sources of Plutonium contamination. Obviously a ship (Thresher) undergoing acceptance testing has no nuclear weapons on board. An intelligent UG - who claims decades of Naval service - knew this. Therefore, he intentionally lied. IOW either UG accuses without first thinking (due to a shortage of intelligence), or he knew he was lying to The Cellar. But then both are characteristics of people who blindly follow the political party line.

A plutonium 238 danger is the same reason why a dirty bomb is so feared. New Horizon launch has an estimated one in 350 chance of failure. This plutonium danger is why something like 18 special teams are at the Cape only for this launch. A risk undertaken because other New Horizon energy sources are just as dangerous or moreso.

But Urbane Guerilla proclaims CNN as wrong while never once proclaiming such errors from Fox News. Typical of a partisan brain that waits for instruction from a political party to know what to think.

And so we have a basic question. Is UG that dumb as to promote the party line? Or is he so corrupt as to intentionally lie to The Cellar? Maybe a partisan UG forgot how to think. He proclaimed something without instruction from his political party handlers.

Wonder if Is smart enough to turn grass into milk? :lol: :Flush:

What's an RTG?

a brief explanation of how spacecraft use Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators for power.

Scratches head ... U-235 is only extracted from Uranium ore after a long and difficult process. That's weapons grade uranium, and it's relatively scarce.

U-238, having an extra neutron thrown at it, instead of exploding, generates Plutonium-239, which is weapons grade Plutonium.

This is why only the Plutonium bomb was tested in WWII ... Plutonium was easier to make, they had enough for the test shot, and tested the less-straightforward assembly method of the Fat Man, crossing their fingers and hoping the Little Boy shotgun design would work the way the numbers said it would.

(I don't know a damn thing about physics, but I do know the history of the construction of the Bomb)

nice plutonium fact sheet for anyone who cares

Do we have an axe grinding smiley? ;)

So, tw, how about you consider, as I did, the contents of the reactors of the submarines I mentioned? Does or does not enriched-uranium nuclear reaction leave us with some plutonium, whether the reaction is a breeder-reactor reaction or no?

Some supporting info here, w/discussion of isotopes

Nine years' service isn't a decade, nor several decades. You are simply wrong on this point. You also may have convinced yourself that any who disagree with you are puppets of this or that political group, disapproved of by you in your obviously infinite/infinitesimal wisdom, but that makes the convinced a grand total of precisely one. Nobody's buying it, tw. Partisan politics -- well, that's all about you, kid. You're still a crank, and you still can't or won't copyedit for beans.

And it looks like New Horizons is going to launch today... currently on a ten-minute hold(?) in its countdown, new launch time 13:50 EST, 10:50 PST, 18:50 GMT.

Wolf already posted that link, UG. :rtfm:

Urbane Guerrilla didn't know about plutonium when criticizing CNN. How typical. UG does not know the difference between Pu-238 and Pu-239, and yet is quick to criticize others anyway. Citing a URL about plutonium proves the Thresher - with no weapons onboard and a freshly fueled uranium reactor - has plutonium? Of course not. But again, UG hopes no one will notice he rewrites history. UG even cited breeder reactors (that are not on submarines) so that others will think he is informed. Anything to avoid the question, "Are you that naive or do you routinely lie to The Cellar?"

UG posts myths when his political agenda is at risk. Honesty being a complication that UG avoids. This is the same UG who recently bragged about his intelligence. This is the same UG who rewrote Vietnam history to promote his extremist political agenda.

New lurkers should understand why UG posts insults rather than honest facts. His myths about Vietnam were exposed. Being so vindictive and so attached to his political agenda, then he never got over having his myths exposed. UG was an expert on Vietnam War history - and yet did not even read the Pentagon Papers.

UG's claims about plutonium contamination from the Scorpion and Thresher remain myths. A Russian submarine that did have plutonium weapons sunk off of Norway. Despite what UG posts, plutonium is that dangerous. That plutonium danger resulted in an expensive deep water operation to alleviate the plutonium threat. UG just forgot to learn that detail. UG forgets details that contradict his political agenda. Of course, Urbane Guerrilla. Its called honesty and reality. You should learn how to be honest so as to avoid facial disfiguration. It’s called learning facts before having a political agenda. It’s called having respect for the Cellar as to not lie - to not rewrite history when convenient. After posting myths about Vietnam, you should be more careful when you rewrite history. You are again lying - this time about plutonium. The scary part is that you probably believe your own embellishments.

But again, CNN was correct and Urbane Guerrilla was wrong. UG was so quick to criticize because, again, his political agenda is more important than reality and honesty. Well, UG finally learned about isotopes - kicking and screaming then entire way back to reality. He will not concede that plutonium is hazardous. That would be conceding too much in one day.

The launch as seen from my office, yesterday. Certainly a fast mover -- the Atlas was above the treeline and out of sight in well under ten seconds!

http://static.flickr.com/43/88715967_c0848547ca.jpg

Nice picture!

So, tw. You've done a better job than I could of demonstrating your remarkable pettiness, and a careful misreading of about everything I've written, with the exception of the Recipe thread, over the past several months. So, to crankery and leftism, we now add a neurotic pettiness to your list of personal traits. Might this by why you style your handle in the miniscule rather than the more usual majiscule? Recall that you're the guy who tried to demand that someone prove a negative through formal logic -- so who are you to lecture anyone about honesty OR reality? I don't take off of you, sonny boy, and have never seen a reason to take you seriously, having read your posts. You're not a nice man, tw, and you're not smart either. Be pointlessly offensive enough, and you could end up getting your access suspended too. As you can tell, that won't happen to me; I know how to be polite.

I'm taking the high road -- for you to do the same, you'd need to go on oxygen.

UG do you by chance have a real life? Come on and tell us about it!

Wanna buy the best knife you ever had, B-B? We should talk.

The continuation of this January 19th, 2006 thread ...

New Horizons' Results: Flowing Ice, Haze, and Mysterious Plains on Pluto
Nature World News - Brian Stallard - 7/25/15

Below is NASA's news conference that runs over an hour and a half.
But the best geek-time is from the 40 minutes from 30:00 --> 1:07

Little G and I caught a live presentation on this at the Museum of Science in Boston. Amazing science.