4 ms·
You don't even need the TG part if you just want to heat the water. Drop an alpha source with a heat sink in there and it'll heat the water directly. Of course
by gh02t 7y ago
You don't even need the TG part if you just want to heat the water. Drop an alpha source with a heat sink in there and it'll heat the water directly.
Of course, all the isotopes suitable for use in an RTG are a) extremely dangerous and b) extremely expensive. Pu-238 makes gold look like dirt price wise, it's around 5-10 million dollars per kilogram and is chemically and radiologically extremely dangerous, but minor details.
- gambiting 7y ago>> Pu-238 makes gold look like dirt price wise, it's around 5-10 million dollars per kilogram and is chemically and radiologically extremely dangerous, but minor details. The price is actually infinite, since the global supply is somewhere between 20-30kg total. No one will sell you any no matter the price.
- gh02t 7y agoYou can actually buy microgram quantities if you know where to look, it's occasionally used in laboratories as a test source. You could buy larger quantities if you had a really good justification and were willing to pay for the cost of producing it, that's effectively what NASA is doing.