[ RadSafe ] Was there a Plutonium Power source aboard Apollo XIII

[Andreas Kronenberg]

Yes, there was one source of Pu-238 with 70 W(electric).  Size was 46x46 cm, weight 14 kg, designed life 5 years. If you need more technical info, please let me know. Regards, -Andreas

Am 02.04.2018 um 11:28 schrieb Roger Helbig:

> Was there a Plutonium power source aboard Apollo XIII?  This article
> claims that there was, but the source is Nuclear News, so it is not
> exactly known for its journalistic excellence.
> 
> Roger Helbig
> 
> https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2018/03/31/the-real-houston-problem
> 
> Has the world forgotten the catastrophic danger if a plutonium-powered
> space rocket crashed to Earth
> 
> by Christina MacPherson
> 
> Beyond Nuclear 31st March 2018, President Trump has announced that he
> wants the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to
> “lead an innovative space exploration program to send American
> astronauts back to the moon, and eventually
> Mars.” But the risks such ventures would entail have scarcely been touched upon.
> 
> For those of us who watched Ron Howard’s nail-biter of a
> motion picture, Apollo 13, and for others who remember the real-life drama
> as it unfolded in April 1970, collective breaths were held that the
> three-man crew would return safely to Earth. They did.
> 
> What hardly anyone remembers now — and certainly few knew at the time
> — was that the
> greater catastrophe averted was not just the potential loss of three lives,
> tragic though that would have been. There was a lethal cargo on board that,
> if the craft had crashed or broken up, might have cost the lives of
> thousands and affected generations to come. It is a piece of history so
> rarely told that NASA has continued to take the same risk over and over
> again, as well as before Apollo 13. And that risk is to send rockets into
> space carrying the deadliest substance ever created by humans: plutonium.
> https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2018/03/31/the-real-houston-problem/
> 
> Christina MacPherson | April 2, 2018 at 4:04 am | Categories: safety,
> technology | URL: https://wp.me/phgse-zEL
> 
> Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
> http://nuclear-news.net/2018/04/02/has-the-world-forgotten-the-catastrophic-danger-if-a-plutonium-powered-space-rocket-crashed-to-earth/
> 
> Tell Word Press to get out of the Fake News business!
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Andreas Kronenberg
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