[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 142 (Tuesday, October 21, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H8916]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       PLUTONIUM POWER SOURCE PROVEN SAFE ON NASA PROBE TO SATURN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the recent 
Cassini mission to Saturn. This was a successful launch on a Titan 
launch vehicle that left Cape Canaveral a week ago tomorrow morning. 
Actually, it was 4 a.m. on Wednesday. It was a mission that garnered a 
lot of publicity, primarily because the probe, this deep space probe 
that was going to one of the moons of Saturn, it is a moon called 
Titan, it had a plutonium power source on it. The source of electricity 
to run all the computers and the sensors on this satellite, this probe, 
was plutonium, and as everybody knows, plutonium is radioactive and it 
is dangerous.
  Mr. Speaker, as soon as I heard about this mission 6 months ago or so 
and I knew it was going to be going off, I immediately had some of the 
leaders of the Cassini program from NASA come into my office and brief 
me, because I live in that area and I remember very well the 
controversy surrounding the Galileo mission. I am sure many Americans 
remember the Galileo mission, which was a mission to Jupiter, and we 
had a probe that went into the Jupiter atmosphere. It was a very 
successful mission and got a lot of publicity.
  So 5 years ago when that mission was taking off, at that time there 
was a lot of controversy as well about the plutonium power source. I 
was also concerned because I live in the area, my wife and daughter 
live in the area, my father lives in the area, all of my friends live 
in the area. So I wanted to find out the facts on this issue, and I was 
actually very disappointed to see, they never really came out in any of 
the press coverage on the Cassini mission.
  The plutonium that they use to power these vehicles is plutonium that 
has been solidified in a ceramic. It is encased in metal and it has 
essentially been tested and tested and tested so that it can withstand 
a disaster. And indeed I discovered on my research on this issue that 
actually at one point there was a mission that failed on the launch pad 
and the rocket blew up with the plutonium on board. It was out in 
California at Vandenberg Air Force Base. And not only did the plutonium 
power source, they call it an RTG power source, not only did it not 
break up and spill plutonium into the atmosphere, they were actually 
able to clean the thing up and put it on another satellite, it was 
constructed so well to withstand the blast.
  The other issue that there has been some concern about is that this 
thing could reenter the atmosphere and in the process of burning up, 
that it would release all of this plutonium into the atmosphere. And 
they have also designed the plutonium power source so that if it does 
reenter the atmosphere, it has a casing around it and the casing 
absorbs the heat and it never actually burns up.
  Indeed, I found out that plutonium RTG's were actually on the Apollo 
mission, and Apollo 13, when it reentered the atmosphere, there were 
plutonium RTG's on the Apollo 13, and they survived the reentry and 
there was no release of plutonium into the atmosphere.
  The bottom line is here that the engineers, the men and women who 
designed this power source, and it has been used 26 times safely on 
various missions, and as well they use the same technology in Russia 
and they have used it on many missions. It is designed to withstand an 
explosion on the launch pad without releasing any plutonium into the 
atmosphere, and it is designed to reenter if there were an accident and 
it were to fall back to Earth and not burn up and not release any 
plutonium into the atmosphere.
  So, Mr. Speaker, the point is basically this. They have designed it 
so that it is safe and there is no way, if one talks to these 
scientists there is no way that we could send probes out to Jupiter, 
out to Saturn, to those outer planets, without this power source.
  People will say, well we can use solar. The solar rays are so weak 
when probes get that far out from the sun that we would have to have a 
solar array as big as the State of New Jersey to drive this probe. It 
is impossible to do that.
  Well, it turned out the mission went off successfully. It was a 
successful launch. Cassini is on its way to Titan and it is going to 
yield valuable scientific information. The news media did a disservice 
and the scare tactics did not work, and I congratulate NASA.

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