2 ms·

i wonder if this would be a good use of nuclear waste..

• jessriedel 8y ago
  It's not. The material used for radioisotope thermoelectric generators needs to have the appropriate half-life (not too long so that it actually produces a useful amount of power per mass, not too short so that it's doesn't exhaust itself) and it needs to not produce destructive types of radiation (which will fry electronics in addition to killing people). The vast majority of nuclear waste doesn't have this property. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Fuels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... The closest thing to what you're looking for appears to be Americium-241, discussed in the above link, which apparently can be extracted from nuclear waste, but it's not a very good choice.