NASA: no Russian Plutonium, no more space exploration

[Irbis]

NASA Can Make 3 More Nuclear Batteries, And That's It

Plutonium-238 is still in really short supply

NASA technicians with the MMRTG used to power the Curiosity rover in 2011

Few materials in the universe are in as short supply as plutonium-238--the hot, radioactive material NASA uses to power its pluckiest spacecraft. It's estimated only 77 pounds (35 kilograms) of the stuff remains available to NASA, yet only 37 pounds (17 kilograms) of that supply is of a high-enough quality to use. And that's a huge problem for deep-space missions of the future.

Plutonium-238 is an artifact of the Cold War, a byproduct of the process used to make nuclear weapons. Since nuclear non-proliferation became popular, the flow of plutonium-238 has ceased and left limited stockpiles of this incredibly useful and relatively long-lived fuel. Plutonium-238 continues to power deep-space missions such as Voyager, Curiosity, and New Horizons, but according to a new report by Space News, there's only enough left to make three more nuclear batteries.

The batteries in question are called the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or MMRTGs, which the Department of Energy makes for NASA. When a spacecraft launches with an MMRTG, it puts out about 125 watts of power at the start but fades to about 100 watts after 14 years. (As the Pu-238 decays, it releases less and less heat to for the battery to convert into electricity.)

There's another nuclear battery design, however, that could stretch NASA's shrinking stockpile: the Advance Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG). This model uses less than one-fourth the plutonium-238 to produce the same amount of power as an MMRTG. Among its potential missions? Powering a nuclear submarine on Saturn's moon Titan. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. Last year, NASA closed down the ASRG team, ending that particular avenue of escape--for now.

NASA intends to use the first of the three MMRTGs to power the Mars 2020 mission, which will use a spacecraft almost identical to the Mars Curiosity Rover. The other two nuclear batteries have unknown fates. The Department of Energy just restarted domestic production of plutonium-238, but making it in large enough quantities to help the space program is an ongoing challenge.

Funny that, Republicans first closed Plutonium producing plant then outsourced it to Russia, creating 'slight' problem due to all that sanction business (though funnily enough that doesn't stop NASA from still buying Russian rocket engines and supply missions). Now they tried to restart production but it turns out most of the staff was let go or retired and training replacements will take at least better part of a decade, and production is still not big enough for larger missions. Oops?

[Zixinus]

Is Plutonium-238 used anywhere else currently?

[Irbis]

Is Plutonium-238 used anywhere else currently?

Not really. But, it decays quickly, and while we generate a lot of it in spent nuclear fuel, it needs to be recovered from it. Ever since "green" groups painted nuclear reprocessing as totally evil, mon, western governments cut funding on reprocessing and research of cleaner methods to do it. Because it's better to dump highly radioactive, valuable elements that could be easily reused into trash bin where they will remain dangerous for millennia, instead of recovering/re-burning them and storing far safer, extra spent fuel.

This led to Russia (and maybe China) being last big producers on Earth (and even these two countries were 'persuaded' to not do it anymore) leading to current shortage. Unless someone ponies up money to restart production, deep space exploration ends in 2020. Oh, and totally forget about manned missions, these would require order of magnitude more than we will optimistically have without much bigger efforts.

[madd0ct0r]

The West?

Not all of the west: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-19550658 - from 2012

Up to 50 jobs could be created at Sellafield in the development of nuclear batteries to power spacecraft.
Chemists at Britain's National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) plan to make the batteries using Sellafield's large store of waste plutonium. The batteries could then be used as a power supply for the European Space Agency's (Esa) spacecraft. As well as the new jobs, this project could accrue significant UK multi-million pound exports.
In 2009, Esa funded a pilot project to examine the cost and practicality of establishing a European source of material for Radioactive Power Sources (RPS). RPSs are ultra-long life batteries for use in the Esa's deep space programme. The RPS batteries are not to launch the spacecraft, but to keep instruments running over several decades. Tim Tinsley, programme manager for NNL, said: "We're more than half way through the £1m pilot proving the viability of being able to extract the isotope [chemical element] from the civil plutonium stockpiles. We have a quantity of this plutonium at our labs at the Sellafield site and a team of highly experienced chemists are 'proving' the chemical flow-sheet for the process."
Currently, Esa uses an isotope called plutonium-238 for these batteries, but this is only available from Russia and America. It is also only available from military reactors, and supplies could run out in about 2018. This would mean the isotope being extracted at Sellafield - called americium-241 - could not only be used in Esa's projects, but would also open the door for an even greater multi-million pound export potential to countries currently reliant on plutonium-238.
Mr Tinsley said: "Technically, there are no barriers to the success of the project, it would be down to funding and politics within Europe and they are already tightly constrained. "Esa needs this fuel source for their space 'road-map' - they cannot do it without it and we at NNL are doing everything we can to make that a success." But deep space exploration is only one use for the isotope that is being explored.
"There'll always be domestic applications that require a power source for a 20 or 30-year duration in inaccessible locations such as deep sea or deep underground in oil wells," added Mr Tinsley. In November, Esa will decide whether or not to continue the funding. If funding is ratified, Mr Tinsley suggests that jobs could start being created steadily from 2014 to a point of full production around 2020.

[Simon_Jester]

Americium is probably not as good a candidate for RTGs as plutonium-238 (if it were, we'd already be using it, I suspect). But it is a viable alternative within reason... except I don't know if it generates enough power per unit weight to be a good alternative for deep space applications where ounces count.

[Irbis]

Americium is probably not as good a candidate for RTGs as plutonium-238 (if it were, we'd already be using it, I suspect).

The problem with Americium is that it offers only 22% of Plutonium energy density (you need 4x as much to generate same power) and produces much more penetrating radiation, requiring more shielding (again, more weight). On the other hand, it can power devices for 10x longer time, thought that would be useful only in longest missions. Anyway, pity, while it's some alternative it's an imperfect one and the reasons why we couldn't just use best available technologies in space are sad

[Enigma]

But the article says that the DoE has just restarted domestic production of P-238. How soon can they make meaningful quantities of the stuff?

[Iroscato]

So I'm literally just sounding ideas off a wall now, be gentle with me.

What could the political implications of this be? I ask because space exploration is an industry currently in some kind of explosion, and with Russia possibly holding the keys - or at least, the best keys - to the USA's future in that industry...what could happen? If the US is starved of plutonium, their space venture may be more restrained than that of China and Russia, which would in turn lead to a possible military disadvantage against both nations, something I imagine the hawks having a hard time swallowing.
So...will America start playing nice, find an alternative, or take some stronger action to secure its supply of plutonium? Or am I just talking out of my anus? It's fine if so, it just makes me a little uneasy thinking about where this could lead.

[orbitingpluto]

Missions as far out as Jupiter might be able to be done on solar panels, like how they're going to power Europa Clipper, but there's too many environments where solar power is not an option, or is poor option compared to the relatively great amount of power RTGs provide consistently and constantly.

Here's two recent articles with more info than that Popsci one:

http://spacenews.com/u-s-plutonium-stoc ... mars-2020/
(Also covers the plans to restart production)

http://spacenews.com/nasa-sets-new-fron ... spacenews/
(If RTGs are important to power spacecraft, it's good to know what spacecraft are in the pipe to use RTGs)

[Sea Skimmer]

But the article says that the DoE has just restarted domestic production of P-238. How soon can they make meaningful quantities of the stuff?

Something like eight years counting 2012 was the, but this is a limitation of funding rather then technology, and the funding has been erratic so that date may slip. Popsci is being Popsci , coming late to a topic and providing limited (at best!) information. The Sterling RTG project was cancelled specifically to pay for this effort, but that project was only getting a few million a year, and overall funding is to the tune of about 10 million a year which is just slow as balls for an effort like this. Still its not like anything is all that mystical about doing it, its just that the facility which previous did the work at Savannah River Site was shutdown, alongside a number of other utterly obsolete and somewhat dangerous facilities at that complex. So everything is start from scratch. But this isn't a new or surprising thing, I was reading stuff about this over a decade ago. Its not like it took anyone by surprise, it was just the stockpile built up before shutdown was rather large. However while the half life of U-238 is fairly high, its not so high that you can usefully stockpile unlimited amounts.

The shutdown of obsolete cold war facilities had other more pressing implications anyway, such as the US shutdown all tritium production for a while, meaning that its ability to service and maintain thermonuclear bombs was endangered by the same half life problem affecting the U-238. Congress naturally addressed that issue first. Now its addressing, if slowly, the U-238 issue. Another big nuclear issue on the table is that of the Modern Pit Facility, basically a foundry that can cast the actual solid cores of nuclear bombs. Back in 2004-05 when a lot of this all came to head at once congress refused to approve a new facility, while it did approve a titium restart. Now we've kinda half ass rolled a partial capability for this into a facility at Los Alamos which was supposed to be primarily for research. The Russians meanwhile have simply never stopped making new pits, even while the US was funding destruction of Russia nuclear and chemical weapons.

[Simon_Jester]

Something like eight years counting 2012 was the, but this is a limitation of funding rather then technology, and the funding has been erratic so that date may slip. Popsci is being Popsci , coming late to a topic and providing limited (at best!) information. The Sterling RTG project was cancelled specifically to pay for this effort, but that project was only getting a few million a year, and overall funding is to the tune of about 10 million a year which is just slow as balls for an effort like this. Still its not like anything is all that mystical about doing it, its just that the facility which previous did the work at Savannah River Site was shutdown, alongside a number of other utterly obsolete and somewhat dangerous facilities at that complex. So everything is start from scratch. But this isn't a new or surprising thing, I was reading stuff about this over a decade ago. Its not like it took anyone by surprise, it was just the stockpile built up before shutdown was rather large. However while the half life of U-238 is fairly high, its not so high that you can usefully stockpile unlimited amounts.

Uh, I think you mean plutonium-238. Uranium-238 has a half life comparable to the current age of the Earth; it's the 'nonradioactive' uranium that we talk about as depleted uranium. About as radioactive as a pile of concrete, which is precisely why it can be stockpiled.

Not so much saying this to gainsay you as to make sure there's no ambiguity for anyone else. The problem here is simply that any usefully radioactive isotope that can put out enough 'radio' to generate the useful 'thermal' in a 'radio-thermal generator' will be subject to radioactive decay over time and the stockpile won't last indefinitely.

Now we've kinda half ass rolled a partial capability for this into a facility at Los Alamos which was supposed to be primarily for research. The Russians meanwhile have simply never stopped making new pits, even while the US was funding destruction of Russia nuclear and chemical weapons.

Knowing how the Russian economy works and how many kleptocrats they've got just waiting to sell things off...

I suspect that if the Russian government stopped making nuclear bomb cores, they'd never be able to restart the production line. The critical experts and tools would just disappear and the country is corrupt and poor enough that recreating the necessary knowledge base and industrial base would be problematic. So they can't stop because if they do, eventually Russia as a nuclear power will just... cease. Whereas the US's civilian and scientific nuclear infrastructure is advanced enough that it won't spontaneously evaporate if the government stops making bombs.

[Irbis]

Missions as far out as Jupiter might be able to be done on solar panels, like how they're going to power Europa Clipper, but there's too many environments where solar power is not an option, or is poor option compared to the relatively great amount of power RTGs provide consistently and constantly.

Europa Clipper only goes on solar sails because sending it with RTGs would kill plutonium supply right now:

http://spacenews.com/41399europa-clippe ... -missions/

I'd say sending solar probes makes sense only as last resort option, since you pay weight tax, have less space or power for instruments and much more potential problems (like sails failing to unfurl, probe being larger target for threats or sails generating interference of their own) for same price. Then you have really awesome missions, like sub to icy moons, planes to upper atmosphere of Venus or gas giants, or rover to poles of Mercury that would be only possible with some form of nuclear power. It's sad, really

I suspect that if the Russian government stopped making nuclear bomb cores, they'd never be able to restart the production line. The critical experts and tools would just disappear and the country is corrupt and poor enough that recreating the necessary knowledge base and industrial base would be problematic. So they can't stop because if they do, eventually Russia as a nuclear power will just... cease. Whereas the US's civilian and scientific nuclear infrastructure is advanced enough that it won't spontaneously evaporate if the government stops making bombs.

I wouldn't be so pessimistic, though yes, Russia has a lot of problems with keeping the knowledge transfer alive and often has to buy to keep factories from going under. No, the issue is Soviet equipment was made with rather different priorities to western ones, assuming unlimited free manpower for maintenance and prompt replacement by next generation of warheads, not upgrading it to stay in service for longer periods. Technical progress in 50s to 80s simply excluded any keeping obsolete stuff, progress was too rapid. This has to be replaced with equipment based on modern priorities.

Then there was this small issue of losing facilities in 14 countries that broke away, forcing Russian industry to come up with replacements for often critical parts they could get nowhere else. Had they stop manufacturing new warheads, they would wake up with defunct, dangerous equipment without any upgrades or spare parts possible. Had they stop melting old ones, you'd have a pile of obsolete by design, dangerous arsenal presenting huge ecological threat (and it's not like West doesn't benefit from reduction of arsenals or number of nuclear subs at sea). Criticizing them for doing both, is, well...

[Simon_Jester]

I didn't intend to criticize.

The Russians melting their old bombs is eminently sensible, even if they didn't have service lifetime issues.

The Russians keeping up at least slow production of new warheads is also sensible given the Russian strategic priorities. And I honestly would be concerned in their place that if they stopped the production line they might be unable to restart it.

I don't think that's an unreasonable or bad thing for Russia to care about. Russia has every right to want to maintain a nuclear capability. I could disagree with quite a few of their domestic policies, but I'm not disputing that.

[orbitingpluto]

Missions as far out as Jupiter might be able to be done on solar panels, like how they're going to power Europa Clipper, but there's too many environments where solar power is not an option, or is poor option compared to the relatively great amount of power RTGs provide consistently and constantly.

Europa Clipper only goes on solar sails because sending it with RTGs would kill plutonium supply right now:

http://spacenews.com/41399europa-clippe ... -missions/

I'd say sending solar probes makes sense only as last resort option, since you pay weight tax, have less space or power for instruments and much more potential problems (like sails failing to unfurl, probe being larger target for threats or sails generating interference of their own) for same price. Then you have really awesome missions, like sub to icy moons, planes to upper atmosphere of Venus or gas giants, or rover to poles of Mercury that would be only possible with some form of nuclear power. It's sad, really

You have solar panels confused with solar sails- but you do have a point with nuclear power sources being useful and even needed. Europa Clipper is possible due to advances in a number of areas, but the fact is there are places where solar power just can't cut the mustard- like should we even go caving on other planets, or explore oceans, or head out farther out than Jupiter.

[Sea Skimmer]

Whereas the US's civilian and scientific nuclear infrastructure is advanced enough that it won't spontaneously evaporate if the government stops making bombs.

It isn't true that the infrastructure was advanced; about all of it was old. Almost all of it was physically taken apart too, so 'advanced' is a rather irrelevant consideration at that point. Secondly, skills which are not used or funded don't exist. This is human nature 101. That's true of just about anything, but its been bad enough for the US that serious questions exist as to our ability to create new ones even given new facilities. The only effort that did get seriously funded was supercomputers to try to simulate a nuclear bomb, to guess as to if our existing ones still even work given the steady build up of decay products inside of them. I've met someone who works on that, but they could of course, not say much on how well it's ever worked. Ultimately though new cores and entirely new will be required no matter what, if the US is continue to have reliable nuclear devices. And not like, some giant super dirty gun type device with such a low service lifespan you have to keep it disassembled. I'm sure that could always be made, but that sort of thing is of course, not the point. The point isn't to use them at all.

The decision to stop making nuclear bombs in the US was purely political, for a political goal, made by people who believed nuclear weapons would 'go away' if we let them and hugged enough trees. It had nothing the hell to do with some magical US ability to 'know' how to do things that nobody is being paid or trained to do for multiple decades. The facilities and people were dumped because it was believed they'd never again be needed, and frankly some of them were unsafe anyway and should have been replaced (big surprise with stuff as old as the 1950s). Subjects that complex, which remember the production halt also predated stuff like digital video to say, record every minute of every stage of production, are just not things you can easily pick back up anywhere on earth. There is no difference between Russia and the US on this subject, that idea is just absurd. Russia kept building them because they did not believe the atomic bomb was obsolete as a tool of national policy, plain and simple. And they were completely right, and I for one believe always will be right.

Of course it'd all be no big deal if we could simply test a few nuclear bombs now and then, and this is why the US military and the civilian nuclear staff of the DOE who actually build the things always opposed a comprehensive test ban treaty, and badly wanted a super low yield limit, 4lb yield (not kidding) being proposed for it, but that didn't happen for the same political reasons as above. And reasons which have been shown utterly useless by Indian, Pakistani and North Korean actions. As it is even modernizing existing bombs to simply be safer with new triggering systems is problematic because they are impossible to test. As it is were left still trying to modernize designs we know are simply highly inferior in both reliability and safety/security to what we could build even at the end of the cold war, because the final generation of designs was cut short.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm.

I was thinking more in terms of civilian nuclear power and so on... but you have a point that there are a lot of skills that are NOT transferable.

[FedRebel]

Not really. But, it decays quickly, and while we generate a lot of it in spent nuclear fuel, it needs to be recovered from it. Ever since "green" groups painted nuclear reprocessing as totally evil, mon, western governments cut funding on reprocessing and research of cleaner methods to do it. Because it's better to dump highly radioactive, valuable elements that could be easily reused into trash bin where they will remain dangerous for millennia, instead of recovering/re-burning them and storing far safer, extra spent fuel.

Hippies are an ignorant lot, they'll blindly jump into a 'scary' thing they barely understand and go full Chicken Little, the most dangerous thing about their number is that they all don't wear tye-dye and drive hemp powered mini-bus', it just takes one in a suit with an apparent credible background.

Part of it is fear of the unknown, part of it is the fear of devastation like what was reaped on Japan. Were it not for the Hippie ilk, the US would be heavy into a Nuclear Reminiscence (nuclear power vastly surpassing coal/oil power, nuclear pulse propelled space craft, etc.)

But just one liberal hippie in a suit is all it takes to snowball a vocal minority that can apply political pressure. The political establishment always goes for the path of least resistance, and there was never really a 'Big Nuclear' lobby and nuclear applications were still formative concepts when the battle was to be fought so counter arguments were not well known nor parseable into digestible laymen speak.

This led to Russia (and maybe China) being last big producers on Earth (and even these two countries were 'persuaded' to not do it anymore) leading to current shortage. Unless someone ponies up money to restart production, deep space exploration ends in 2020. Oh, and totally forget about manned missions, these would require order of magnitude more than we will optimistically have without much bigger efforts.

I'd say the Limited Test Ban Treaty in the 1960's did more damage to manned deep space exploration than the current hippie induced Plutonium shortage, after the USAF's 'Project Orion' had to be shutdown, any practical effort for economic space travel became a pipe dream.

This planet is fast becoming our tomb, with shortsighted idealized liberalism serving as the nails for the coffin.