Comment Re:Nuclear Power has Dangers (Score 1) 523
The half life is not all that long on the isotopes used in RTGs
You do realize that there is a decay chain right? The next one in the sequence has a half life of 246,000 years and it carries on after that ending at some stable isotope of lead.
No military has ever put dirty bombs in to inventory. The reason is that they are really not effective weapons.
Correct. However there is a difference between deliberately trying to destroy something and accidentally doing so. No military has ever used a nuclear power station as a weapon. Are we therefore to conclude that they are completely safe and pose zero risk of contaminating the environment? The question is not whether these things are a deadly weapon the question is whether they are dangerous. Plutonium is also extremely toxic chemically.
Even if these batteries can be made safe enough to launch, and I don't doubt that they could, you have to prove that which will require a considerable engineering effort potentially making them more expensive than the budget will allow. In addition Pu-238 has a very limited supply.