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

[Rees, Brian G]

I don’t know why they'd put a Pu238 RTG on Apollo XIII, the mission wasn’t that long, and was close enough to the sun to use solar panels.  

-----Original Message-----
From: RadSafe [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Meade
Sent: Monday, April 2, 2018 7:39 AM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Was there a Plutonium Power source aboard Apollo XIII

Plutonium is not remotely the most dangerous or deadly substance ever created by humans.

Just one of the "scariest."

Karen Wetterhahn, for example, died from exposure to two drops of dimethyl mercury absorbed through her gloves, for example.  While technically an organic compound, researchers have distilled it into astonishingly lethal concentrations.

And let's not even get into viral and infectious agents being toyed with in labs across the globe.

On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 5:28 AM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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-pro
> blem
>
> 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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--
Thanks,
Jason A Meade, AS, BS, MHSA, RRPT, R.T.(T) Senior Radiation Safety Specialist Virginia Commonwealth University


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