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A consequence of the shorter half-life is that plutonium-238 is about 275 times more radioactive than plutonium-239 (i.e. 17.3 curies (640 GBq)/g compared to 0.063 curies (2.3 GBq)/g [57]). For instance, 3.6 kg of plutonium-238 undergoes the same number of radioactive decays per second as 1 tonne of plutonium-239.
An interactive electronic technical manual (IETM) is a portal to manage technical documentation. IETMs compress volumes of text into just CD-ROMs or online pages which may include sound and video , and allow readers to locate needed information far more rapidly than in paper manuals.
The first large-scale nuclear reactors were built during World War II.These reactors were designed for the production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.The only reprocessing required, therefore, was the extraction of the plutonium (free of fission-product contamination) from the spent natural uranium fuel.
Plutonium recovered from LWR spent fuel, while not weapons grade, can be used to produce nuclear weapons at all levels of sophistication, [25] though in simple designs it may produce only a fizzle yield. [26] Weapons made with reactor-grade plutonium would require special cooling to keep them in storage and ready for use. [27]
The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is a 1999 book by Eileen Welsome. It is a history of United States government-engineered radiation experiments on unwitting Americans, based on the Pulitzer Prize -winning series Welsome wrote for The Albuquerque Tribune .
The members were tasked to install an 8–10 feet high antenna, two transceiver sets, and the plutonium-powered Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator and its seven plutonium capsules. When the mission reached camp IV, a blizzard hit, and team leader Manmohan Singh Kohli decided to turn back.
Plutonium carbide comes in several stoichiometries (PuC and Pu 2 C 3). [1] It can be used as a nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors in conjunction with uranium carbide . The mixture is also labeled as uranium-plutonium carbide (UPuC).
The pits of the first nuclear weapons were solid, with an urchin neutron initiator in their center. The Gadget and Fat Man used pits made of 6.2 kg of solid hot pressed plutonium-gallium alloy (at 400 °C and 200 MPa in steel dies – 750 °F and 29,000 psi) half-spheres of 9.2 cm (3.6 in) diameter, with a 2.5 cm (1 in) internal cavity for the initiator.