Plutonium Plan Will Be Nuclear Time Bomb, THE MOSCOW TIMESArjun Makhijani
They achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a reactor using uranium and graphite. This work eventually led to the first successful testing of an atom bomb in the desert of New Mexico in July 1945. View all 3.3 Usage Plutonium is the second transuranium element after neptunium...
These buttons of refined plutonium metal were used in the core of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. (Image credit: U.S. Department of Energy) Plutonium is a radioactive, silver metal that can be used to create or destroy. While it was used for destruction soon after it was made,...
Researchers there were helping design nuclear reactors to produce the plutonium needed to create an atomic bomb. From Science News Within one piece of the sample, the scientists searched for a variety of plutonium called plutonium-244, which is produced by the r-process. From Science News The ...
By the same token, Pu-238 and Pu-239 behave differently in nuclear reactions as well. Pu-239 is fissile like U-235. That means it can be used in bombs and reactors. In fact, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, nicknamed “Fat Man”, was a plutonium bomb. ...
Americans started to think about what the atomic bomb could do to the U.S. and its people. When anyone mentioned plutonium or the word "nuclear" the idea of Hiroshima or Nagasaki being destroyed was the first thing people thought about. No one could even ponder the idea that it could be...
Just five years after it was produced, it was used to create the “Fat Man” atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan. Today, however, it is mostly used for creating energy throughout the world. In fact, over one-third of energy produced in most nuclear power plants comes ...
Plutonium reprocessing is meant to create a new and emissions-free fuel source for resource-poor Japan, but the size of its stockpile has started to attract criticism, even from allies. Plutonium can be used to create nuclear weapons. Although Japan has vowed the material would never be used ...
According to the National Nuclear Security Administration, you only need a bowling-ball-sized amount of plutonium to make a pit, the core of an atom bomb. But, getting hold of the raw materials isn't easy. Plutonium doesn't really exist in nature; it only comes from nuclear reactors. ...
The plutonium business and the spread of the bomb : By Walter C. Patterson for the Nuclear Control Institute, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA, 1985, 272 pages, cloth cover, $16.95doi:10.1016/0304-3894(85)85026-3H.H. Fawcett