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Plutonium (94 Pu) is an artificial element, except for trace quantities resulting from neutron capture by uranium, and thus a standard atomic weight cannot be given. Like all artificial elements, it has no stable isotopes.
Only fissile isotopes of certain elements have the potential for use in nuclear weapons. For such use, the concentration of fissile isotopes uranium-235 and plutonium-239 in the element used must be sufficiently high. Uranium from natural sources is enriched by isotope separation, and plutonium is produced in a suitable nuclear reactor.
Plutonium isotopes are expensive and inconvenient to separate, so particular isotopes are usually manufactured in specialized reactors. Producing plutonium in useful quantities for the first time was a major part of the Manhattan Project during World War II that developed the first atomic bombs.
Manhattan District From top to bottom, left to right: Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor K-25, the primary uranium enrichment site The Hanford B Reactor used for plutonium production The Gadget implosion device at Los Alamos Alsos soldiers dismantle the Haigerloch pile of the German nuclear weapons program The Trinity test, the first nuclear explosion Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and ...
Manhattan Project scientists had identified two fissile isotopes for potential use in bombs: uranium-235 and plutonium-239. [7] Uranium-235 became the basis of the Little Boy bomb design, first used (without prior testing) in the bombing of Hiroshima ; the design used in the Trinity test, and eventually used in the bombing of Nagasaki ( Fat Man ...
Workers leaving the Manhattan Project's Y-12 plant on 11 August 1945. The Clinton Engineer Works (CEW) was the production installation of the Manhattan Project that during World War II produced the enriched uranium used in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, as well as the first examples of reactor-produced plutonium.
Fat Man Replica of the original Fat Man bomb Type Nuclear fission gravity bomb Place of origin United States Production history Designer Los Alamos Laboratory Produced 1945–1949 No. built 120 Specifications Mass 10,300 pounds (4,670 kg) Length 128 inches (3.3 m) Diameter 60 inches (1.5 m) Filling Plutonium Filling weight 6.2 kg Blast yield 21 kt (88 TJ) "Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) was ...
Decay chain of 240 Pu. Plutonium-240 (240 Pu or Pu-240) is an isotope of plutonium formed when plutonium-239 captures a neutron.The detection of its spontaneous fission led to its discovery in 1944 at Los Alamos and had important consequences for the Manhattan Project.