135
Americium: How a small element could power the next century of space exploration
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Technology
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With an atomic number of 241, it’s hardly small.
Yes. And also:
Cringe...
AI slop?
Plutonium-238's half-life is 87.7 years, Americium-241 is 432.6 years. Which... is almost 5 times longer, so... not sure why that's cringe?
I believe they're referring to the fact that it's not an element of major topic. This is the first time I've ever heard of it.
I think this could be compelling given that tech continues to get more power efficient. I don't know the numbers, but if we were to launch the same tech that's on Voyager 1/2 today, would we be able to do that with 1/5 the power? If so, those probes could likely still have all their instruments running if they used Americium.
"Small" meaning "author of article seldom thought of it before."