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Probably not. The problem with isotopes needed for things like this is that they tend to have short half-lives (short half-lives = high decay rate = lots of heat generated), which means they pretty much don't exist naturally at all. So they will need to be produced artificially as fission fragments or through neutron irradiation of other isotopes. It's easy enough to produce large quantities of "hot" isotopes in a fission reactor which could be used for RTGs (ignoring safety) but the problem there is that if you're operating a nuclear reactor anyway why not use the heat production from the isotopes to produce energy there instead of going the roundabout, and unsafe, route of packaging things up in RTGs?


There's also the thermocouples, which also wear out and are made of pretty expensive materials themselves.

However, it is likely that a "home" device could be made simpler/less expensive.


Couldn't they use a sterling engine as well? That would be a bit more maintainable I would think?




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