The plutonium drives of Voyager 1 and 2 remind me of an amazingly risky toy. I've never owned one. Don't think I was born soon enough. I'm talking about Gilbert's toy nuclear reactor cum energy lab! As far as I know it came with tiny grains of plutonium! Really? Holy moly! Anyone ever seen one or maybe even owned one? How on earth did it work?
From what I can see it isn't a reactor as such, you'd need a dangerous amount to develop power, but it is a radioactive experiment set. A cloud chamber is a device that shows the path taken by ionising radiation. We had something similar when I studied physics at school. The source should be low level and shielded!
From what I can see it isn't a reactor as such, you'd need a dangerous amount to develop power, but it is a radioactive experiment set. A cloud chamber is a device that shows the path taken by ionising radiation. We had something similar when I studied physics at school. The source should be low level and shielded!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the insights Kev. So do you think it was more dangerous than say the Chemistry Sets we had at home as as kids?
DeleteI suppose, technically it was, really there is no safe dosage for radiation, it is only ever playing the percentages.
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