Nuclear rods and the new colony

When sending people to the stars you must account for what they do when they get there.

I sent along seeds and animal embryos and mining equipment. I also built the Ark out of "scavengable" materials. But the very first thing I had to do was thaw out the colonists. What do you use for electricity?

I tweaked an isotope of thorium, compressed the isotope into nuclear rods and encased those nuclear rods inside a lead glass tube with a slit. Under normal conditions, you would rotate the thorium rods until a portion of their surface was exposed through the slit, heat would be generated which was converted by thermocouples into electricity which powered the thaw cycle. If the Ark crashed, the glass would shatter and you will still get the thermocouples geared up.

Later, these rods could be removed and used as sort of super-batteries to power their vehicles and equipment. This took place in Part 2 of Rome's Revolution. I also made it so they could be ganged together in serial or parallel fashion to create a power plant.

Finally, this made-up variant of thorium had a half-life of 7000 years and could be used to create the mini-nukes which figure prominently in The Ark Lords.