The international community should ban nuclear-powered spacecraft.

My 2 contentions are: P1: Nuclear-powered spacecraft is too dangerous. P2: Nuclear-powered spacecraft is too expensive & unfeasible. Nuclear spacecraft is defined as: Most commonly powered with the radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or the RTG. This is the equivalent of a Plutonium battery. NASA states that currently, 74% of all nuclear spacecraft use the RTG. P1: Nuclear-powered spacecraft is too dangerous. Plutonium is the primary ingredient used to power most spacecraft systems today. It is not only very dangerous on account of it being highly radioactive, but it"s also extremely toxic. We simply can"t afford enormous environmental damage & the threat to human life from plutonium radiation, which nuclear-powered spacecraft accidents can cause. Although the idea of furthering space exploration is a nice prospect, the risks are just too high. NASA: Plutonium released to the environment today will stick around for the next 1/2 a million years. Even worse is that plutonium is one of the most poisonous substances; doses of just one millionth of a gram have large amounts of radiation & is difficult to contain. Judge, if one millionth of a gram of plutonium can cause so much harm, what would happen when pounds of it gets dispersed from the radio-isotope thermal generator, or RTG spacecraft? This is exactly what happened when SNAP 9A crashed into Earth in 1964. Luckily, it was over the Indian Ocean & not Los Angeles! NASA says that 74% of all nuclear spacecraft use plutonium! The fact is that plutonium is extremely harmful. Envir. Protection Agency: Plutonium is breathed in through the lungs, which almost 98% of the time cause harmful side effects like mutant cells & DNA transformation & serious health effects like lung cancer. Studies by the Univ. of Berkeley linked the accidents of the SNAP 9A & 1978 Kosmos 954 to an increase in global lung cancer. Judge, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that what goes up can sometimes come down too. Unfortunately, in the case o/nuclear spacecraft, when they come down, they come down w/all that cancer causing plutonium! P2: Nuclear-powered spacecraft is too expensive & unfeasible. The dangers that come from an RTG have made the prospect of a nuclear spacecraft reentering Earth's atmosphere & scattering radioactive material over a wide area extremely risky. Washington Post: The Cassini spacecraft in 1998 carried 35x more plutonium than the SNAP 9A, which crashed in 1964. If the Cassini destructed, the radioactivity would have killed 5 billion people in just one day. About 60 nuclear spacecrafts have been launched & there"s been already 28 accidents so far! Nuclear spacecraft development & launches are expensive. It cost 3.5 bill just to launch the Cassini! The SNAP 9A cost $2.5 billion, & look what happened to it! It re-entered the Earth, thus a big waste of money. Not only is nuclear-powered spacecraft too expensive to launch, recovery & clean-up from radioactive material & plutonium is expensive, proving the point that nuclear-powered spacecraft is unfeasible. Scientific American Magazine: If there is break up of a spacecraft at launch, the costs of decontamination of plutonium in areas would be at least $250 million in a farmland, to at least $1.5 billion in cities for each square mile. Judge, if there is no feasible technology for deep space exploration, then so be it. Saturn & Pluto, or deep space exploration, can wait. They are not going anywhere, so why rush to deploy methods that aren"t safe? We cannot risk human lives & environmental damage over this & that is why we need a ban on nuclear powered spacecraft.