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Criticality accidents are divided into one of two categories: Process accidents, where controls in place to prevent any criticality are breached;; Reactor accidents, which occur due to operator errors or other unintended events (e.g., during maintenance or fuel loading) in locations intended to achieve or approach criticality, such as nuclear power plants, nuclear reactors, and nuclear ...
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]
Thereafter, Silkwood and two other co-workers personally associated with her (roommate Sherri Ellis and boyfriend Drew Stephens) would be tested at Los Alamos National Laboratory; while the latter two only tested positive for insignificant amounts of plutonium exposure, Silkwood was found to have 6–7 nanocuries (220–260 Bq) of plutonium-239 ...
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.
Typically in a modern weapon, the weapon's pit contains 3.5 to 4.5 kilograms (7.7 to 9.9 lb) of plutonium and at detonation produces approximately 5 to 10 kilotonnes of TNT (21 to 42 TJ) yield, representing the fissioning of approximately 0.5 kilograms (1.1 lb) of plutonium. [10] [11] Materials which can sustain a chain reaction are called fissile
“Cleanup at Los Alamos is long delayed,” Coghlan said, adding that annual spending for the plutonium pit work has neared $2 billion in recent years while the cleanup budget for legacy waste is ...
Reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu) [1] [2] is the isotopic grade of plutonium that is found in spent nuclear fuel after the uranium-235 primary fuel that a nuclear power reactor uses has burnt up. The uranium-238 from which most of the plutonium isotopes derive by neutron capture is found along with the U-235 in the low enriched uranium fuel of ...
A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as 600 pounds (270 kg) can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatonnes of TNT (5.0 PJ) (this is nearly the record for the ratio between yield and weapon weight, achieved with the W56). [2] A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation.