Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] nuclear psub?

["Nero Wolfe" <wolfe19@megsinet.net>]

Those are thermopiles.. not reactors..  Another viable resource ;-)   And someone else mentioned certian devices using alpha particles to knock electrons across a solar cell...  Again.. another viable option.  but still not quite what I was looking at.  These are actually one of the safest sources of "nuclear" power... a completely sealed compartment that produces energy for the halflife of the material contained within.  Problem is, this requires some really radioactive stuff.  The "pile" was obviously only mildly radioactive.  if even that.  Remember enrico fermi lived a long life after this reactor.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 1/5/2003 at 3:56 PM Dale A. Raby wrote:

> Hey, 
>   now.... wouldn't that be cool.  The reactors on board some of those old 
>   space probes launched in the sixties are still producing current from their 
>   thermocouples in atomic piles... tiny ones at that...after all these 
>   years.