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Plutonium is a chemical element; ... and is roughly as strong and malleable as aluminium. ... since it manifests itself today as an excess of its daughters, ...
Log–log plot comparing the yield (in kilotonnes) and mass (in kilograms) of various nuclear weapons developed by the United States.. The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy released such as blast, thermal, and nuclear radiation, when that particular nuclear weapon is detonated, usually expressed as a TNT equivalent (the standardized equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene ...
To reduce the concentration of Pu-240 in the plutonium produced, weapons program plutonium production reactors (e.g. B Reactor) irradiate the uranium for a far shorter time than is normal for a nuclear power reactor. More precisely, weapons-grade plutonium is obtained from uranium irradiated to a low burnup.
"Plutonium is a weird material," said Mike Furlanetto, a lab scientist and the project's director. "We understand it well enough to be confident our [nuclear] stockpile works, but there are a lot ...
Feb. 19—Los Alamos National Laboratory reached what federal officials say is a key milestone in developing its first plutonium pit that can be placed in a nuclear warhead as it seeks to produce ...
Plutonium-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fission, raising the background neutron radiation of plutonium. Plutonium is graded by proportion of 240 Pu: weapons grade (<7%), fuel grade (7–19%) and reactor grade (>19%). Lower grades are less suited for bombs and thermal reactors but can fuel fast reactors.
Today's moderated/thermal reactors primarily run on the once-through fuel cycle though they can reuse once-through reactor-grade plutonium to a limited degree in the form of mixed-oxide or MOX fuel, which is a routine commercial practice in most countries outside the US as it increases the sustainability of nuclear fission and lowers the volume ...
Watchdogs are raising new concerns about legacy contamination in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and home to a renewed effort to manufacture key components for nuclear weapons. A ...