Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: ? MER's Are Solar Powered Not Nuclear Powered

MERs and New Horizons

I skimmed the New Horizons DEIS, which said the most credible plutonium release from an accident would be one gram (incidentally, a 1-in-300 chance of this happening, which is small but not trivial). What was interesting to me is I figure the threat from New Horizons and MERs is about equivalent, since I doubt the RHUs in the MERs had anything like the crash safety protections given to RTGs.

The one gram release was given a 20% chance of causing a single cancer death.

Of course, this all depends on whether one trusts the Nasa estimates of an accident likelihood.

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