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Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. ... a safe was discovered during excavations of a burial trench at the Hanford nuclear site ...
The Plutonium-238 used in RTGs has a half-life of 88 years, as opposed to the plutonium-239 used in nuclear weapons and reactors, which has a half-life of 24,100 years. [ full citation needed ] In April 1964 a SNAP-9A failed to achieve orbit and disintegrated, dispersing roughly 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of plutonium-238 over all continents.
In the past, one of the largest releases of plutonium into the environment has been nuclear bomb testing. Those tests in the air scattered some plutonium over the entire globe; this great dilution of the plutonium has resulted in the threat to each exposed person being very small as each person is only exposed to a very small amount.
The government says it will dispose of its 140 tonnes of radioactive plutonium - currently stored at a secure facility at Sellafield in Cumbria. The UK has the world's largest stockpile of the ...
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 ...
Civilian nuclear power was misdirection away from the real agenda of building nuclear power plants, which was to help supply the nuclear weapons complex, producing enriched plutonium as feedstocks ...
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]
Radiobiological literature and IAEA establish a safe limit of absorbed dose of 0.001 Gy/d for terrestrial animals and 0.01 Gy/d for plants and marine biota, although this limit should be reconsidered for long-lived species with low reproductive capacity. [18] 1909 study in which the effect of exposure to radioactive radium on lupins is shown.