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A good reason is the lack of availability of the needed isotope (Pu238).

The Europa Clipper has a huge array of solar panels instead of an RTG due to the last of the available supply going into the New Horizons spacecraft.

Pu238 was a cast-off isotope from nuclear weapons development so it was more readily available during the cold war. We should be happy that it's scarce now.

Also solar panels have gotten a lot better than they were when Voyager was launched, but even today anything going out past Saturn is not going to be able to use solar energy.



There was just an article about a whole array of “nuclear batteries” using all sorts of decent chemistry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42118306

Are any of those candidates or are they just too small or with too poor a mass ratio compared to plutonium RTGs?


Maybe. I don't know. I'd point out that tritium is a gas, so it may be hard to contain for long periods of time especially in space.




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