Plutonium Powered Pacemaker

[Argus25]

Who on Earth would want a boring Lithium or other battery powered pacemaker when you can have one powered by Plutonium 238 ? Now that is exciting. The circuit also would be nothing more than a two BJT multi-vibrator clocking along at 60 ticks per minute and likely totally immune to the effects of electric appliances/drills and RF fields nearby.

It would be fun to have some of those "Plutonium batteries" to run low power radios and cmos based digital clocks.

I found the attached article in 1969 Electronics Australia:

[MrBungle]

I wonder if it went wrong you could get that "iron man glow" in your chest?

[GrimJosef]

There are more details of the US programme in a similar area here https://www.lanl.gov/orgs/nmt/nmtdo/...ing/heart.html. They built a 50W source with a view to powering an entire artificial heart. It turned out that the heart itself was more problematic than its power source.

They did identify a few potential 'issues' though. The thing was expensive (it involved rare isotopes and metals such as platinum and rhodium as well as the Pu-238). Also there was a risk of a major nuclear clean-up incident if, somehow, the patient should accidentally be cremated after death or, presumably, killed in a high-temperature building fire. And they were disappointed to discover that the containment could also be breached if the patient should be shot by a large-calibre gun which, given that this was the US, certainly couldn't be ruled out.

Cheers,

GJ

[bikerhifinut]

Fascinating and I can remember back in the 60s the relative excitement over the potential uses of small nuclear devices (in a manner of speaking....) But now we know a bit more and something as toxic as Plutonium, never mind the ionising radiation wouldn't get past first base these days. How times and attitudes change.
A.

[Radio Wrangler]

"Do not stack more than xx high..."

Keep away from tungsten carbide (Look up 'demon core')

David

[cheerfulcharlie]

Plutonium has got this bad image, it's time an ad agency cleaned it up and made it acceptable and mainstream. Large nuclear plants powering towns is a bit old hat now, a modern home furnace/boiler powered by Plutonium would provide all a family's needs. Replacement P packs could be available at local large stores with a deposit as an incentive to return the depleted ones and thus a good way of kids earning extra pocket money if they find any discarded ones.

[GrimJosef]

I think you'd be OK stacking Pu-238 wouldn't you ? Pu-239 on the other hand ... (well you wouldn't want it on any hand really).

Cheers,

GJ

[MrBungle]

Originally Posted by cheerfulcharlie

Plutonium has got this bad image, it's time an ad agency cleaned it up and made it acceptable and mainstream. Large nuclear plants powering towns is a bit old hat now, a modern home furnace/boiler powered by Plutonium would provide all a family's needs. Replacement P packs could be available at local large stores with a deposit as an incentive to return the depleted ones and thus a good way of kids earning extra pocket money if they find any discarded ones.

This sounds like SodaStream but safer

[avocollector]

I recall seeing small self-contained nuclear generators advertised in Scientific American sometime in the mid 1960's promised to produce 12v at 5 amps for the next 20 years - they seemed to be the size of a large motor with a cast outside shell. Despite all my urging my parents would not buy one (US $3000 was the price). Often wonder how many were actually sold.

[Refugee]

There is a place in a remote desert where for some reason broken satellites crash.
The natives keep finding steel balls that stay warm at night.
Obviously they are the power packs that are designed to survive reentry and be recovered.
You will not find them any more because the natives get there first and make them into phone chargers in short order.

[turretslug]

There are reports of radioisotope-powered meteorology beacons being used in remote parts of the former Soviet Union and (perhaps inevitably) apocryphal tales of trappers, indigenous hunters etc. stealing them or breaking them up for scrap or out of curiosity and tucking the "warm metal" contents inside coats. Whether any of these stories is actually true is difficult to nail down.

I've got one of those pocket-warmers that uses a slow-burning compressed charcoal stick, but that seems positively innocuous in comparison!

[emeritus]

The first experimental nuclear reactor of Queen Mary College's Department of Nuclear Engineering was actually in the main college building in the Mile End road, in the middle of a residential area of East London. It was replaced by a much larger one, sited in a corner of a building mainly occupied by the Department of Civil Engineering's Hydrology lab, which was located on an island in the Bow Back Waters of the River Lea in Stratford. In the 1970's my late uncle was its caretaker, and treated me to an unofficial tour one Sunday morning. When the plans for the Olympic village were published, I was amused to see that the building which had housed the reactor was slap bang in the middle of the proposed Olympic stadium. A google search for "Queen Mary nuclear reactor" produced a number of documents released under freedom on information requests that recounted the complete history of the reactors, from construction to decommissioning and removal.

Atomic energy was indeed less scary in the 1960's.

[Philips210]

Originally Posted by turretslug

I've got one of those pocket-warmers that uses a slow-burning compressed charcoal stick, but that seems positively innocuous in comparison!

Hi

I remember those. My brothers used to take a couple of hand warmers on their winter days out fresh water fishing. Thinking about the safety of these hand warmers, I wonder if there's a risk of carbon monoxide.

Regards
Symon

[Electronpusher0]

Originally Posted by bikerhifinut

Fascinating and I can remember back in the 60s the relative excitement over the potential uses of small nuclear devices (in a manner of speaking....) But now we know a bit more and something as toxic as Plutonium, never mind the ionising radiation wouldn't get past first base these days. How times and attitudes change.
A.

The radiation is (mostly) Alpha particles, which being Helium nuclei are heavy (2 protons and 2 Neutrons) so are easily stopped by most things including paper and skin.

According to here:
https://www.orau.org/PTP/collection/.../pacemaker.htm
Dose rates at the surface of the pacemaker are approximately 5 to 15 mrem per hour from the emitted gamma rays and neutrons. The whole body exposure is estimated to be approximately 0.1 rem per year to the patient and approximately 7.5 mrem per year to the patient's spouse.

According to Wikipedia in 2003 there were some 100 people in the US who had nuclear powered pacemakers. When one of these individuals dies, the pacemaker is supposed to be removed and shipped to Los Alamos where the plutonium will be recovered.

Peter

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by turretslug

There are reports of radioisotope-powered meteorology beacons being used in remote parts of the former Soviet Union and (perhaps inevitably) apocryphal tales of trappers, indigenous hunters etc. stealing them or breaking them up for scrap or out of curiosity and tucking the "warm metal" contents inside coats. Whether any of these stories is actually true is difficult to nail down.

The Russians certainly used "radioisotope thermoelectric generators" in relatively large numbers - and there have been associated 'incidents; - see https://web.archive.org/web/20101220...ncidents/31772

[turretslug]

I do recall the plutonium-powered pacemakers from one of my physics books at school, likely written in the '70s but as with so much stuff in physics books, the distinction between "possible", "proposed" and "actually used" seemed to be blurred and a bit prone to author's flight of fancy.

There was certainly discussion of containerised and sealed miniature nuclear electricity generators in New Scientist around 30 years ago, the idea being that these would be built by one of the experienced US contractors in the field and leased to Third World countries with waterside barge-mounting as one option, part of the lease terms being return of the sealed unit to the US for long-interval re-fuelling/overhaul. The world has changed since then, though, and the idea of freight containers (sealed or not!) filled with nuclear material being sent around the world en-masse for public use would certainly make a room go quiet!

With any developments like the above, one of my first thoughts is, OK, something expensive, governmental and possibly hush-hush has been funded by taxpayers, now someone's hoping to fill their pockets by consumerising it. Maybe the plutonium pacemakers came from looking to commercialise satellite power plant investment and development, the containerised power plant scheme might have been trying to make something of the treasure sunk into this wacky project;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_X-6, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_NB-36H

[Refugee]

I once read that the Russians used to pass crop seeds through a radiation sterilizer to get rid of pests.
When the scheme was scrapped the equipment was left to one side for collection but this ended up being for ever. The scrap dealers obviously "got at" some of them.
There was at least one incident where the perpetually hot "coals" were used for heating.
This only lasted a short time as the finders quickly got sick.

[MrBungle]

This thread lead me down a wikipedia hole and I found this terrible disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

[Refugee]

I can remember the story about that scrapped radio therapy machine.
The Wiki article is a lot more extensive than the original story.

[m0cemdave]

This is from the 1971 edition of "Atom", a technical brochure that UKAEA used to issue with their annual report.

The UKAEA was heavily involved in spinoff applications, both of their nuclear technology and non-nuclear research projects.