How Plutonium got us to Pluto

Plutonium played a key role in the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Featuring Professor Martyn Poliakoff.

[TheSnobar]

"And your suggestion is rubbish" The prof is pretty straight forward hahahaha xD

[ruawhitepaw]

Don't forget Cerium, named after Ceres, which was also considered a planet at the time.

[MSIk]

"Your suggestion is rubbish" - professor not having any of Brady's shenanigans today.

[Discitus]

3:25 "How do you just turn hate into pure electrical energy?"

I see a prospective Sith.

[vectoredthrust]

Actually, The US has resumed production of Plutonium-238 since 2013. NASA's budget has been more generous as of late, and this is considered extremely high priority for deep space missions. While it'll take awhile to get back up to production as the Department of Energy re-learns how to produce it by talking to retirees and such, it's expected that 3lbs of the stuff will be produced annually. Enough to cover NASA's needs

Meanwhile, in a parallel development The European Space Agency is developing an alternative nuclear power source from British Nuclear Waste. The EU is funding work at NNL in Sellafield to produce Americium-241 Batteries. While not as ideally energy dense or easily shielded as Pu-238, Am-241 can be produced from British Nuclear waste, due to the peculiar way we were sorting it that means nearly pure isotope samples have been generated over the decades of decay

[jeremybuchanan]

Plutonium coaster - the perfect gift for anyone who never wants to drink cold coffee again.

[BatteryAcid]

Your suggestion is rubbish, Brady.

I love Sir Dr. Prof. Mr. Martyn "The Prof" Poliakoff. :)

[JustOneAsbesto]

Heh. 'Far more efficient than gasoline'.

I just love the mental image of a generator chugging along through space.

*Put-put-put-put-put-put. I'M GOING TO PLUTO! Put-put-put-put-put-put.*

[TTaylor]

"It's not as if Pluto has been throwing rocks at earth" lol love this guy

[culwin]

Pluto wasn't "demoted", it was properly classified with its friends.
That's like saying a red panda was demoted because it's not classed with pandas.

[redkb]

I spy a scrambled Void Cube at the very end of the video. :)

[halityilmaz]

Such a perfect tone of voice to explain it with clarity.

[roidroid]

3:00 Something that it's good to understand, is that it's not technically heat being converted to electricity here.  The electricity is actually being made from the *difference* in temperature from the hot plutonium on the inside to the coldness of empty space on the outside.  For the engine to work, the cold is just as important as the heat, you need both.

That's why the outside of it is covered with those black fins, it's to make sure that the "cold part" is as cold as possible. 

The principle is very similar to why car engines are more powerful in cold weather, because they get their energy from the *difference* in temperature of the burning fuel inside the engine vs the cold air outside.  If for some reason the air outside the car engine was just as hot as the burning fuel (like if you were driving through a burning building or something), then there wouldn't be a temperature difference at all, and the car engine wouldn't work! This is also why some cars equiped with turbos also have a device called an "intercooler", it's to make sure the air comming into the engine is as cold as possible, as this will give you more power than if the incomming air was warm. You want to maximise that temperature difference!

It's the same with the radioactive engine this video is talking about:  The outside of it must be kept cold.  Because it's not just about the heat, it's about the hot-vs-cold.
This principle it's prettymuch the core principle of every engine ever designed, so it's a good thing to keep in mind as it can make you start to look at engines differently. Prettymuch all energy is extracted from 2 things which have some sortof relative difference to one another: hot vs cold (thermal energy), high vs low (gravity, eg: hydroelectric energy), reacted vs unreacted (chemical energy), high pressure vs low pressure (ie: wind energy, also explosive energy). If all you've got is one homogenous thing which can't change from one state to another, you can't extract energy from it, you need 2 things. If everything was always the same temperature, ie: if we lived in a world where everything was always as hot as that lump of plutonium and nothing was ever cooler (nor hotter) than that - then we wouldn't be able to design any sortof engine to extract energy from it.

[PARlS]

I love this channel because they haven’t asked for subs or likes like all the other channels, I can’t wait for this channel to reach 1 million subscribers

[The_Gallowglass]

I like this guy. He explains everything clearly and does it in a charming way.

[JamesCromwell]

I believe they're trying to restart production of Plutonium at the Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee specifically for the space program.

[logtothebase]

Brady is correct it should be reclassified as a dwarf element

[garethdean]

Periodic Videos, a chemistry channel; 'Pluto hard done by'; 'triumph of physics.'

Sixty Symbols, a physics channel; 'Boring non-planet!'

See physicists, this is why nobody invites you to parties.

[rogerdotlee]

I absolutely love Love LOVE *LOVE* that tie. Nice one, Professor!

[Tjousk]

"Pluto has done nothing wrong"

Yep.
Plutonium should most certainly keep it's name.