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What happens if the launch rocket fails? That’s been the main concern of sending nuclear reactors into space thus far, right? Has this been addressed here?
by baron816 9y ago
What happens if the launch rocket fails? That’s been the main concern of sending nuclear reactors into space thus far, right? Has this been addressed here?
- njarboe 9y agoIt is too bad that most people are so afraid of anything nuclear. I hate to say it, but maybe people working on nuclear power need to change the name. Isotopic power would have pretty bland associations. Uranium 235 is a very low level radioactive metal. Even if the rocket blew up, the isotopic fuel would remain intact (that is, not vaporized into breathable particles). The radioactivity from a Uranium 235 isotopic reactor comes after the reactor has been running for some period of time (from byproducts of the nuclear reaction), not the original fuel itself.
- tbihl 9y agoIn Japan they just call them 'thermal plants' or 'thermal generators' or something like that. Still, in Japan you have people who follow around US aircraft carriers and submarines to sample their wake for any signs of radioactive discharge.
- ekianjo 9y ago> In Japan they just call them 'thermal plants' Japan has completely shut down all operations of Nuclear Plants since 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan
- ptaipale 9y agoAnd as that page also explains, has restarted some of them, and the long-term policy calls nuclear power "the country's most important power source".
- rangibaby 9y agoI haven't heard that before. 原子力(atomic, using atoms)+発電所(power plant) is the common term eg 福島(Fukushima)第一(No. 1)原子力(nuclear)発電所(power plant)
- fb03 9y agoGen-shi-ryoku Hatsu-den-sho? Let's see if I got it right, my Japanese is a bit rusty. I am not sure about the readings of the first two kanji (atomic) so I used generic ones heehe. Thanks in advance.
- rangibaby 9y agoYes you are right. 原子 genshi means atom. 力 means power (strength). Stick them together and it means using the power of the atom.
- stevedonovan 9y agoConsider the thermal Plutonium power sources that have been sent on outer Solar System missions. One of those crashing is a much more serious problem than a new U-235 reactor, since Plutonium is very toxic.
- garmaine 9y agoPlutonium isn't toxic, not any more than any other heavy metal.
- ttul 9y agoIt is radiotoxic
- garmaine 9y agoNope, it is not. Not anymore than the straight radiation you would get from it. When you talk of radiatoxicity what is usually meant is the hot particle theory which says that a bit of radioactive material lodged in one place is more likely to cause cancer, because the radiation given off repeatedly hits the same tissue. It turns out that in cohort studies done this is not true. Specifically people who have inhaled plutonium, an inadvisable thing to do, actually have lower rates of lung cancer. Pu-238 has some radioactivity, although not as much as many fission products. Radioactivity is bad. But the fear over plutonium toxicity is actually overblown beyond the baseline radioactive dose it provides.
- black_puppydog 9y agoThat already happened. Not something we'd want to happen regularly, but not as dramatic as one (me) would have thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954#Aftermath
- sjcsjc 9y ago"maybe people working on nuclear power need to change the name" Renaming things with bad public images is a popular trick. Windscale > Sellafield Blackwater > Xe Services > Academi Philip Morris > Altria
- lostlogin 9y agoThe Blackwater one always mystified me. It’s like they set out to be villains.
- godelski 9y agoA good way to remember energy levels is "longer life, lower energy." Things with a long half life are not decaying very fast. Short half lives, well clearly they don't want to be there, so neither should you.
- Balgair 9y agoI mean, there is a bit of precedence for the fear. It's not that we can't deal with the fission, it's that we can't have really really smart people on deck at all times. The consequences of big failures are pretty bad and pretty newsworthy.
- debt 9y agoIt's an extremely toxic, dangerous material overall. The fear is well-founded in a geopolitically chaotic, variable world. Not to mention, in this case specifically, they're going to strap it to a rocket and send it to Mars. Gonna be hard to sell people on the safety of the mission if we're potentially spewing nuclear material over thousands of square miles in the worst case scenario.
- gh02t 9y agoIt's not really a concern. U235 is basically radiologically inert, it doesn't become significantly radioactive until after the reactor has been running for a while. The concern with fission reactors in space is for stuff that might return to Earth after it's been in operation long enough to build up other isotopes that are radioactive and subsequently burning up in the atmosphere. For a vehicle that is on a one-way trip to Mars, and where the reactor will be brought online after it's out of Earth's orbit, this isn't a problem. Edit: even on a round trip it wouldn't be a big deal, the reactor can just be jettisoned before re-entering Earth's gravity well. You just can't have a fission reactor with spent fuel anywhere near Earth orbit. Space reactors in general are pretty interesting, because the design criteria are so different from terrestrial power reactors.
- baron816 9y agoAh, ok. Thanks for the explanation.
- pishpash 9y ago> For a vehicle that is on a one-way trip to Mars, and where the reactor will be brought online after it's out of Earth's orbit, this isn't a problem. Polluting the new homeland from the start, eh?
- Jesus_Jones 9y agoJust bury it out back, we'll clean it up later just like we did in Hanford. No problemo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site. More seriously, we can afford to have a small amount of nuclear waste there, but we need to plan for it better than we have previously. First, document where it is and what it contains. Second, I don't know.
- optimiz3 9y agoFun fact: right across from the Hanford Site is a massive Conagra plantation. Source: visited Hanford Site, looked up the company associated with the plantation across the road.
- nahumba 9y agoThats what is bothering you? Did you hear about fukushima? Where are the water to cool it and make steam for the turbine to turn? How much water is needed for a reactor to run safly? What other matterial are they going to heat to turn turbine to produce energy? What is the amount of lost metirial expected over time? And what happen when no cooler matirial is available? Boom?
- StreamBright 9y agoIt happened many times that a nuclear device exploded or by other means entered atmosphere. Lunch site explosions also happened. I think the on the ground accidents are less serious because you can contain them and it is less spread out than for example a satellite exploding in the higher atmosphere. https://listverse.com/2012/01/20/top-10-space-age-radiation-incidents/ https://listverse.com/2012/01/20/top-10-space-age-radiation-...
- nurettin 9y agoNot sure if applicable here; but where I come from they say "the fearful won't have kids"
- InclinedPlane 9y agoThe reactor will be launched in a "cold" state, it will also be in a robust structure (though not as strong as RTGs, though that's unnecessary). The absolute worst case scenario is that you get a release of U-235. That's not great but on the scale of radiological hazards it's comparatively very minor. The reactor doesn't start generating fission products (aka "fallout" isotopes) until it's in space and operating, presumably with no chance of returning to Earth.