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The plutonium shortage in NASA really has nothing to do with technology or science, but just politics. We simply stopped producing the stuff, but we could start again at any time; as the article you linked mentions, we're planning on doing so.


There's enough plutonium to make 10,000 nukes stored in the Sellafield facility in Cumbria, England

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/vaults-will-store-the-n...

So, there is no storage.


It isn't that simple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238#Production

Of course a program could be spun up to actually do the separation, but I think it might be sort of expensive.


I've been there as a child, if I'd have known that, I probably wouldn't have gone.




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