What's powering Voyager is a plutonium pile. Pretty sure you don't want that in your fridge. 10 billion miles from me? Sure, knock yourself out. 10 feet from me? No way.
The real reason you don't want an RTG powering your fridge is that it costs on the order of one million dollars per watt.
https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html
https://mjosefweber.medium.com/nasa-needs-plutonium-ea3bbaad...
It's hard enough getting rid of an old lead-cell battery.
I went searching and this website on watch lists appears to be real, whilst also seeming like a joke.
“Since there are many reasons why a traveler may seek redress, DHS TRIP works with the TSC, as appropriate, when an inquiry appears to be related to the watchlist.
The TSC does not accept redress inquiries directly from the public. Instead, members of the public should contact the relevant screening agency with their questions or concerns about screening.”
https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-structure/national-...
If that shield fails for any reason, including tampering, you're looking at the radiological contamination and likely deaths of everyone nearby at the very least.
Yes. Sounds like something a child would do.
a conventional fridge has electric motors/pumps , live a/c wiring, and gas under pressure. It's not radiation-spilling-everywhere unsafe, but it's not really safe for the kid, either.
Everyone who went near this thing is likely to become ill at the very least.
Indeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
A caesium-137 radioactivity source was left behind and eventually stolen. The thieves successfully dismantled it despite sustaining severe injuries in the process, exposing the radioactive material contained in the shielded capsule. They were fascinated by the strange light emitted by it.
Eventually it was sold to a scrapyard. The owner also became fascinated with the blue glow. He brought the thing home to show everyone. He distributed parts of the material to friends and family. Eventually sold it to another scrapyard but not before his brother took some of the beautiful radioactive dust and smeared it on the concrete floor. Where his daughter sat and ate a contaminated sandwich. She also applied he powder on her own body.
The only reason this unfortunate chain of events stopped is the scrapyard owner's wife noticed everyone was getting sick and notified the authorities. She died later along with the girl. Attempts to bury the child also led to a riot. Scrapyard workers also died attempting to extract the lead from the radiation shielding component.
The Wikipedia article and the Portuguese source it links to seems ambiguous on the matter of whether it was because she notified the authorities, or because a visiting scientist thought to use radiation detectors on other people reporting to the hospital a day after her notification.
People already dope silicone bands and fabric (including underwear!) with Thorium and sell them as "negative ion" "wellness" products. Some are still available to buy on Amazon.
Because there's nothing like "wellness" than exposing your gonads to ionising radiation!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_detector
So the question stands and extends to include this: "why not?"
That is my basic opposition. Happy to be flexible on energy in almost every way. Cost, type, uptime...
But error with nuclear tech tends to endure for a very long time. Fukushima will be raising ocean radiation for a long time, just one example.
These are many lifetime events. Some minor, or recoverable, some profound.
Given we can reasonably run the fridge on solar, and other tech, that risk does not seem to make sense to a lot of people.
Doesn't to me.
Now, that said I am not ideologically opposed. Other tech could very seriously improve risk profile. Maybe it becomes worth it.
Then again, the fridge in my RV can run on a small flame, or a very low current source. And no moving parts!
So, we could make fridges differently too. Make tradeoffs.
Will it? The ocean is very, very big. Contaminated water from Fukushima is a literal drop in a bucket.
The solution to pollution is dilution.
I say that in jest, because dilution involving radioactivity works on much longer timelines than many things do.
But it’s also hideously expensive. Plutonium is, apparently, one of the safer ways to build these things, because it is easy to shield, and the power density is good. But plutonium, as it’s not naturally occurring, is stratospherically expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
I wish I could say that’s a good thing. But no, after the first of them, nuclear weapons seem to have justified their own existence, no matter the cost.
I would rather see remaining weapons material repurposed as deep-space power sources. If that were to solve problems.
Anyhow, Perseverance makes me happy.
Unfortunately this is not possible, nuclear weapons make use of pu-239, which has properties that does not make it a useable RTG fuel.
No, at least union's ones were priced at around $100000-$120000 a pop in materials.
Giant amount of money back in seventies union for an individual, enough to live on for a lifetime.
Note: With alpha emitters, it's 'safe' if it's outside your body, your skin can absorb it. But once you eat or inhale it, you get the full blast right into the quickest dividing cells in your body.
The main reason this are used vs (or sometimes along!) other technologies is that they function rather happily in super crappy conditions we don't -unless some world-ending event happens soonish- usually have on Earth.