Nuclear Batteries
- March 17, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Nuclear Batteries
Subject: Science & Tech
Section: Nuclear energy
Context- From fuel to outer space power plants, the world is developing different usages of nuclear energy to explore the deep space.
Concept-
About Nuclear Batteries:
- A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG) is a type of nuclear battery that uses an array of thermocouples to convert the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material into electricity by the Seebeck effect.
- This type of generator has no moving parts.
- RTGs have been used as power sources in satellites, space probes, and uncrewed remote facilities such as a series of lighthouses built by the Soviet Union inside the Arctic Circle.
- RTGs are usually the most desirable power source for unmaintained situations that need a few hundred watts (or less) of power for durations too long for fuel cells, batteries, or generators to provide economically, and in places where solar cells are not practical.
- In 2021, NASA invited proposals from industries to design nuclear power systems for lunar applications.
- By 2030, the space agency plans to set up a plant that will continuously provide 10 kilowatts (kW) of power—the average annual power intake of a home on Earth.
- Now China is hoping to do one better.
- In 2021, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) took its first step by inviting companies to develop a 100-watt RTG.
- India till now relied only on solar power for its outer space missions.
Nuclear Fuel as Rocket propellants:
- Countries are also trying to develop spaceships that will use nuclear energy as fuel.
- In the meantime, kerosene, alcohol, hydrazine and its derivatives, and liquid hydrogen grew popular as rocket fuel or propellants.
- Nuclear propellants are twice as efficient as their chemical counterparts.
- Their energy density, or the amount of energy they can produce, is 4 million times higher than hydrazine, the most commonly used chemical fuel for outer space missions.
- They are also faster: a round-trip mission to Mars could take more than three years through conventional means. Nuclear propellants might be able to accomplish this in about two years.