The nutty protestors

[mlorrey]

Quite so, Calli.<br /><br />The more responsible NTR designs store the reactants in secure RTG-like modules, not in the engine, or else they design the engine to launch sealed like an RTG with high impact resistance. The NTR reactors I've seen are pretty ruggedly designed. Coolant passages are a rather small percent of reactor volume, which is why they tend to be so heavy. Sealing the nozzle throat and filling the coolant voids with an uncompressible fluid is sufficient to ruggedize a reactor design.<br /><br />The plasma core reactor designs are also safe: the reactant is sealed in a separate high impact vessel that isolates reactant into smaller subcritical masses and only injected into the reactor once the containment fields are developed.<br /><br />The real dispute isn't whether NTR is safe to launch, but whether it is safe enough for those who are neurotically radiophobic and generally ignorant of risk analysis.<br /><br />Much of their concern is properly valid, given the governments dismal record in nuclear pollution at Oak Ridge, Hanford, and other locations during the Cold War era. However they are also suffering from an understandable lack of trust in public officials but are neurotically ignoring real steps that have been taken and are taken to eliminate the unsafe conditions of the past.