Sellafield UK to build RTG's for ESA!

[xenomorph555]

In to years Sellafield in the UK will begin a grand recycling program to turn waste Am-241 into RTG's for ESA and possibly other nations.

Not only do ESA and NASA get to plan deep space missions again with more radioactive fuel, there will also be less barrels of nuclear waste

[PTNLemay]

Do you have a link to an article?

[xenomorph555]

I can't get a link for you but here's the important bits:

"Man has been sifting through trash for millennia, but the extraction of americium-241 waste from the UK's stockpile of civilian plutonium takes the exercise to a whole new dimension. Am-241 - a decay product of plutonium-241 - is the most prevalent isotope of americium in long-term stored plutonium and is currently considered to be waste."

"The National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) in north-west England is just two years away from producing the first developmental pellets of Am-241 for radioisotope power sources (RPS) in its contract with the European Space Agency (ESA)."

"RPS batteries are long-life devices used, not to launch spacecraft, but to keep instruments running over several decades. They have been used in space since the 1960s – NASA used them in their latest Curiosity craft on Mars – but they currently rely on a costly and scarce resource, plutonium-238 (Pu-238)."

[Sky_walker]

Here is the news: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/F-Cosmic-recycling-2107141.html

Google, search in last 7 days for "americium-241 RTG"