RTG

I got back just in time to see the Mariners pull one out in extra innings. Too bad I was too tired to develop coherent thoughts, or I'd have been very excited about it.

So... RTGs. An RTG is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Basically, it's a chunk of radioactive material encased in a shell. The material decays, which generates heat, which gets converted to electricity. It's nice for things like spaceships because it provides constant power for a long period of time. The Russians also used them to power lighthouses... they look sort of like rooftop A/C units. When you put an RTG together, you need a source of radioactive material, which, in the case of Russian RTGs, is usually either strontium or plutonium.

Plutonium is generally the best stuff to use for this, because you get a lot of energy with just a little piece of it. The problem comes when the superpower who controls all of these RTGs wakes up one morning and finds that its empire has crumbled into nothing and its citizens can't even bake bread. So there are thousands of these things just lying around Russia and its former republics, many of whose locations the Russians have forgotten, so they're just waiting for someone to go break them open and try to do some nasty stuff with what's inside.

That's where we move in.

Here's the funny part of all this: you can't even really build an effective bomb with the stuff. At least, not the way you might think. The plutonium in these things is not fissile; that is to say that you can't create a nuclear weapon with it. So maybe you build a dirty bomb with it, spread radiation all over the place, and killing lots of people? Not really. The plutonium is stored as a ceramic, which means it won't dissolve in water and is really tough to render aerosol. Blow it up, and it just breaks into smaller pieces of ceramic. And despite what most people think about plutonium, it isn't that dangerous... cyanide is more poisonous, and some isotopes of cobalt are more harmful from a radiological standpoint.

It's the perceived danger that's the problem. A dirty bomb with plutonium in it creates what some folks like to call "mass hysteria". People hear the word plutonium and freak out. America panics. Anyone from that area who dies from cancer in the next thirty years blames it on the dirty bomb. Oversight committees publish their findings, saying that America knew all about the risk well before it happened and did nothing. America becomes angry; demand retribution; depression and recession follow. So we intervene.

The mission. Without getting into too much detail, an RTG over there was vandalized, which isn't too uncommon (usually thieves looking for scrap metal). A couple of enterprising gentlemen found the casing, realized what it was, and figured they could make some good money selling it (and some others they managed to find), to some other enterprising gentlemen. So we swooped in. The whole thing was over in about five minutes. No shots, no injuries, just a couple of arrests, and a couple of items handed over to the Ministry Of Defense, who were none to happy to have us doing their job for them. Honestly, it wasn't something that they couldn't have done themselves, except that, well, they couldn't have done it themselves.

I might write more about this later. I need some more sleep.