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Nuclear 'batteries' are radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). They require a pretty substantial amount of heat to produce electricity. I don't know a
by daeken 12y ago
Nuclear 'batteries' are radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). They require a pretty substantial amount of heat to produce electricity. I don't know about temperatures, but tritium produces a decay energy of 0.018590 MeV, versus plutonium-238's 5.593 MeV. Assuming you can scale it up directly, the 4.8kg of plutonium-238 in Curiosity would be equivalent to 1444kg of tritium. It's just way, way less energy dense.
Edit: This explanation is way, way off. See response from 'throwaway_yy2Di
- throwaway_yy2Di 12y agoThere's two other differences you'd need to account for: * One Pu-238 nucleus weighs 238 amu; a triton only weighs 3 amu * Tritium decays 7 times faster -- a 12.32 year half-life, vs. 87.7 years for Pu-238 Put together, the specific power (watts/kg) of pure tritium is about twice as high. That's chemically just hydrogen gas, which I'd guess isn't practical. The solids with the highest hydrogen density, like polyethylene ([C2H4]n), would be less power-dense, but not by much. But I think there's some slack here. The ESA is designing their future RTGs to use Americium-241, which is drastically worse (in terms of these figures), yet still usable.
- daeken 12y agoAh hah -- great points, thanks! Edited my original post to note that my analysis was woefully incomplete.