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I wrote on 12 May 94 17:02:50 GMT (Subject: Hot (in two senses!) diving suits):- > A book about nuclear physics I read said that plutonium-238 ... It also said to my surprise that ... 750 grams (one and a half pounds) of it has been used directly to heat deep sea diving suits! ... > I guess very many people would act nervous at diving with a pound and a half of `plute' stuck into their drysuit! Even though Pu-238 can't go critical and is <not> the same stuff as Pu-239 (atom bomb and reactor fuel). The book reference for the above information is "Chemistry of the Elements" by N.N.Greenwood & A.Earnshaw, publ. Pergamon, last updated 1986, last printed 1993, ISBN 0-08-022056-8 (hard cover), 0-08-022057-6 (flexicover), chapter 31 (The Actinide Elements), page 1463 of the flexicover edition. Pu-238's half life is 87.74 years, alpha and no gamma, it decays to U-234, and from that as from U-238. It derives from the inevitable 20% of U-235 that doesn't fission when it should but merely sits in the reactor eating neutrons. I read in another book that 1 gram of it makes 0.6 watt of heat, so 750 grams should make 450 watts, like nearly half a bar of an ordinary electric fire.
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