Close-up observations of Pluto would be impossible without the use of generators that rely on cancer-causing plutonium to produce electricity and heat for New Horizons' instrumentation. Pluto is much ...

In 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft left Earth on a five-year mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Thirty-six years later, the car-size probe is still exploring, still sending its findings home. It ...

Do you remember the scene in “Back to the Future” where the mad scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown, explains to Marty McFly that his DeLorean time machine runs on plutonium? That it needs plutonium for “a ...

British Energy, the nuclear electricity generator, yesterday called for an immediate moratorium on the reprocessing of spent fuel at Sellafield, warning that otherwise the UK would be left with an ...

A spacecraft is only as strong as its power source, which is why when NASA was designing its Perseverance Mars rover, the agency turned to radioactive plutonium. The plutonium that will be blasting ...

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