Plutonium Shortage May Thwart Future NASA Missions

WASHINGTON — NASA is facing the prospect of having to explore deep space without the aid of the long-lasting nuclear batteries it has relied upon for decades to send spacecraft to destinations where sunlight is in short supply.

“Looking ahead, plutonium is in short supply,” Griffin told lawmakers during the first of two days of hearings on the U.S. space agency’s 2009 budget request.

Griffin was asked about the plutonium-238 situation by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). The Pasadena-area congressman’s district is home to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory — the NASA-funded facility building the space agency’s next nuclear-powered spacecraft, the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL.
“After MSL launches, we’re pretty much out of plutonium,” Griffin said.

Though Griffin did not mention it, the U.S. Department of Energy over the winter quietly shelved long-standing plans to resume domestic production of plutonium-238. In 2005, the Department of Energy (DOE) gave public notice of its intent to consolidate the nation’s radioisotope power system activities at Idaho National Laboratory and start producing plutonium-238 there by 2011. Restarting production was projected at the time to cost $250 million.

Meanwhile, how much of the plutonium-238 the United States has at its disposal was not immediately clear. DOE reported in 2005 that its inventory stood at 39.5 kilograms, with U.S. national security customers and NASA expected to consume all but 6.5 kilograms by 2010. U.S. industry sources said they had been told that the United States has a total of just over 11 kilograms on order to meet NASA’s projected demand through the middle of the next decade.

Yahoo