
Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers - matt2000
http://osrp.lanl.gov/pacemakers.shtml
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jmiwhite
More information here:
[http://www.prutchi.com/pdf/implantable/nuclear_pacemakers.pd...](http://www.prutchi.com/pdf/implantable/nuclear_pacemakers.pdf)

~~~
negativity
And so, if you look at the pictures, you'll see an interesting number denoting
the quantity of plutonium powering the device. It's not measured in grams, or
even micrograms, or any unit of mass, as would be common with ordinary
materials. Instead, the quantity of plutonium is measured in curies.

And is there a means of converting curies to mass?

Well, sort of... except radioactive decay generally means the original mass of
a sample of material has been steadily converting itself into something else
over time, so to provide a measurement of mass might not be a practical piece
of information later on, and given the application in these circumstances, the
gross weight of the device is more relevant than the mass of the plutonium
therein, and the power provided by the plutonium, and how hot the slug is,
turns out to be the more interesting number.

So what's a curie?

    
    
      The term "specific activity" is defined as the amount 
      of radioactivity - or the decay rate - of a particular 
      radionuclide per unit mass of the radionuclide. For 
      example, the specific activity of Ra-226 is 1, meaning 
      that one gram of Ra-226 contains one (1) curie (assumed 
      to be uniformly distributed throughout that mass)
    
      http://www.iem-inc.com/information/tools/specific-activities
    

And, so based on all those pictures, the devices seem to average ~2.0 to ~4.3
curies of plutonium.

The specific radioactivity of plutonium, according to the above source, is:

    
    
      Pu-238 - 1.7E1
    

So, approximately one or two grams per device.

Based on all this information, I bet harvesting plutonium pacemakers would be
way more lucrative than stealing kidneys.

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jessriedel
That last line doesn't tell us much, because stealing kidneys essentially
never happens.

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cant_kant
Forms for undertakers have a section where one has to certify whether or not
the deceased person has an implanted device.

Cremating a person with a plutonium powered pacemaker might be a bit of a
health hazard.

~~~
efournie
Cremating a person with a big lithium battery encased in an airtight metallic
casing is also a bit of a hazard. Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators add
also a few big capacitors to the mix. There have been quite a few crematoriums
destroyed or damaged by pacemaker explosions in the last decades.

~~~
david-given
Iain Banks' _The Crow Road_ starts like this:

> It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening
> to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B minor, and
> I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to
> Gallanach.

Fantastic book, with possibly the best opening line ever, and yes, she does
have a pacemaker.

[http://www.tor.com/2009/06/22/a-funny-book-with-a-lot-of-
dea...](http://www.tor.com/2009/06/22/a-funny-book-with-a-lot-of-death-in-it-
iain-banks-the-crow-road/)

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privacy101
Next, nuclear powered car, hopefully.

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hacker_9
How was this ever approved!

~~~
TeMPOraL
How this is not a standard! It's a shame actually that for various reasons, we
don't have more nuclear-powered devices.

