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One of four example estimates of the plutonium (Pu-239) plume from the 1957 fire at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The Rocky Flats Plant, a former United States nuclear weapons production facility located about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Denver, caused radioactive (primarily plutonium, americium, and uranium) contamination within and outside its boundaries. [1]
The Rocky Flats Plant was a United States manufacturing complex that produced nuclear weapons parts near Denver, Colorado. [2] The facility's primary mission was the fabrication of plutonium pits, [3] the fissionable part of a bomb that produces a nuclear explosion.
After the fire, plutonium was detected near a school 12 miles (19 km) away and around Denver 17 miles (27 km) away. An independent group of scientists conducting off-site testing 13 years later found plutonium contamination in areas in nearby Rocky Flats to be 400 to 1,500 times higher than normal, higher than any ever recorded near any urban ...
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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 ...
Fat Man, the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, also contained Hanford's plutonium. The bomb killed an estimated 50,000 people in Nagasaki, The BBC reported.
[57] One of four example estimates of the plutonium (Pu-239) plume from the 1957 fire at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver, Colorado. Public protests and a combined Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Environmental Protection Agency raid in 1989 stopped production at the plant.
Encasing the bomb's plutonium pit in a tamper (a layer of dense material) decreases the critical mass by reflecting escaping neutrons back into the plutonium core. This reduces the critical mass from 16 kg to 10 kg, which is a sphere with a diameter of about 10 centimeters (4 in). [ 121 ]