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A comment on NASA Power Hack Extends 45-Year Voyager 2 Mission Even Longer. Parent comment

Re:NASA Power Hack Extends 45-Year Voyager 2 Mission Even Lo... by FridayoLeary on Thursday April 27, 2023 @06:13PM (#35735230)
Thanks for that source. Maybe it's impractical for domestic use but it looks like they found uses for it in isolated locations for industrial purposes. Obviously it needs to be handled responsibly.
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Re:NASA Power Hack Extends 45-Year Voyager 2 Mission Even Lo... by speed_spread on Thursday April 27, 2023 @07:32PM (#35735829)
> needs to be handled responsibly.

Yes, for the next 10000 years. Plutonium's half life is annoyingly long.

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Re:NASA Power Hack Extends 45-Year Voyager 2 Mission Even Lo... by mlyle on Friday April 28, 2023 @03:45AM (#35738623)
RTGs don't use things with 10,000 year half lives, because they need to have meaningful amounts of decay happening to make heat.

238Pu is pretty common, because it produces just alpha decay and has a half life of 87 years. Within 1000 years, the main remaining activity is 234U with a half life of 240,000 years: still an alpha emitter but much, much less active.

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