Plutonium to Pluto

I wish this thing would get off the ground. The Swampies are pulling their hair out and you just know they'll try something in the last minute.

More than eight years ago, hundreds of protesters chanted anti-nuclear slogans before NASA launched a spacecraft to Saturn carrying 72 pounds of plutonium fuel. The noise before this week's launch of a craft with a similar payload has been more muted. Only 30 anti-nuclear protesters showed up recently to oppose a plutonium-fueled mission to Pluto. The most raucous it got was when protesters tied colorful origami birds to the fence of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

"Folks tend to forget," said protest organizer Maria Telesca of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Ok, so maybe not this time.

Twenty-four pounds of radioactive plutonium is located in New Horizon's radioisotope thermoelectric generator, an aluminum-encased, 123-pound cylinder, 31/2 feet long and 11/2-foot wide, that sticks out of the spacecraft like a gun on a tank.

Inside the cylinder are 18 graphite-enclosed compartments, each holding 1 1/3 pounds of the plutonium dioxide. Similar generators previously have been used to power six Apollo flights and 19 other U.S. space missions.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy have put the probability of an early-launch accident that would cause plutonium to be released at 1 in 350 chances.

Who makes these odds? And why do they release them?

If there was an accident during an early phase of the launch, the maximum mean radiation dose received by an individual within 62 miles of the launch site would be about 80 percent of the amount each U.S. resident receives annually from natural background radiation, according to NASA's environmental impact statement.

Clairvoyance must be part of these people's repartee. That is a SWAG if I ever heard one. Wind variables, explosion variations, etc, could all vary the amount released and how it is spread.

Nice to see that CNN is informing the public on the absolute worst case scenarios. Wouldn't want to make anyone nervous.