“NASA’s Cassini space probe executed a flyby maneuver around the Earth on August 18, 1999. This space ship was traveling at record speeds, more than 10 miles per second, and carrying more than 72 pounds of radioactive plutonium on board. It was only seconds away from a possible inadvertent reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, which would have released more than 400,000 curies of radiation in a breathable/ingest able [sic] form. This could have resulted in millions of fatalities, and untold suffering for generations to come.”
It’s hard to imagine a spacecraft traveling at that speed being more than a few seconds away from much of anything. It’s also hard to imagine errors in the trajectory that wouldn’t be found and corrected days beforehand.
It wouldn’t have released the material, either. Reentries have happened before, and no case that was designed to contain the material ever failed.
A curie is a unit of radioactivity, not radiation. What’s the difference? A curie measures the number of particles emitted, not their strength or what their effects are.
The material itself is designed to stay in one piece if the case is somehow breached.
See also my post on RTGs.
Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Health, Physics, Radiation, Safety
Posted on January 29, 2006 by Stewart Peterson |
