The country will start building a nuclear reactor in June that can produce weapons-grade plutonium, diplomats said Wednesday. |
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Operating from 1950 until the fire in 1957, they converted uranium to weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear bombs. |
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And they have reactivated a mothballed nuclear reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium. |
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The University of Southampton used mass spectrometry to probe samples for plutonium, radium and caesium. |
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Greenpeace has been lobbying for ten years to have all plutonium treated as nuclear waste not as potential reactor fuel. |
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A nuclear weapon using plutonium requires approximately six kilograms of fissile material. |
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Accidents could result in explosions which could spread plutonium and other harmful radioactivity over large areas, it says. |
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There are strange out-takes from 1960s documentaries on plutonium waste-disposal and magnetism. |
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Karle's husband, Jerome, was tasked with preparing plutonium metal directly from crude plutonium oxide. The work was dangerous. |
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The plutonium pits of nuclear weapons employ an alloy with gallium to stabilize the allotropes of plutonium. |
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They blended and heated plutonium with gallium and cobalt and then slowly cooled the molten mixture. |
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However this has nothing to do with nuclear power, where impure plutonium is a minor by-product of the fission of uranium. |
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Once machined into their final shape, the plutonium parts were plated with nickel and removed from the glove box system. |
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This new, hollow design used less uranium and more plutonium and created a more powerful explosion as well as a smaller, lighter fission bomb. |
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Experts say that breathing in even the tiniest amounts of plutonium can increase the risk of cancer, especially among children. |
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Given enough plutonium or enriched uranium, he thought they might have been able to produce a bomb in two to three years. |
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These were bombarded with neutrons which converted the uranium to plutonium. |
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The difference is the commercial grade is different from the weapons grade plutonium. |
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Release of plutonium, americium and curium could occur from laboratory or industrial accidents. |
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Just five kilograms of plutonium, in the wrong hands, could devastate a city. |
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Part of the research involved injecting a number of people with radioactive plutonium. |
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Those rods can be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium, enough for potentially three nuclear bombs. |
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This would mean preventing Iranian enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of spent fuel to produce plutonium. |
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Thus, even today, it has only enough plutonium for one or two crude nuclear devices. |
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This plutonium is a reject load being returned to British Nuclear Fuels by Japan. |
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Workers at the facility were exposed to radiation as well as the chemicals uranium, plutonium and fluorine. |
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It was the first commercial manufacturer of plutonium and americium neutron sources for oil well, logging and other applications. |
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The plant reprocesses deadly plutonium to make fuel for nuclear power stations. |
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The days of reprocessing spent fuel to produce plutonium and uranium for potential reuse are numbered. |
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Along with more plutonium, this new design required more machining, more complex assembly procedures, and more extensive safety controls. |
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The only manufacturing left on the site when reprocessing goes will be the plant for making nuclear fuel from plutonium and uranium oxides. |
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Reprocessing is only for the purpose of harvesting plutonium to make weapons. |
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A ball of plutonium is surrounded with explosives, all of which detonate at precisely the same moment and with exactly the same power. |
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Even a seemingly tiny piece of radioisotope like plutonium can be emitting many millions of alpha, beta or gamma particles per week. |
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The alchemists of today are those nuclear chemists who routinely transmute uranium to plutonium by bombarding uranium with neutrons. |
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No one is proposing to make bombs out of the small amount of plutonium produced. |
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The waste from a defunct reactor is full of plutonium, a highly toxic metal used as the explosive in atomic bombs. |
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A probe, with a plutonium core, could be sent there to land on and melt through thin ice into the depths below. |
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Radiation from a tiny particle of, say, plutonium is averaged over the entire body to give a dosage in units of sieverts. |
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Some had received large doses of densely ionizing radiation while processing plutonium. |
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To develop a comprehensive set of nuclear weapons, enriched plutonium and uranium are needed. |
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Workers there recently learned that they were exposed to both plutonium and uranium. |
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A highly radioactive solution of water, plutonium and uranium is constantly leaking out. |
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The reactor was designed for breeding plutonium and can readily be converted to do so. |
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Such spent fuel could be reprocessed to produce plutonium for nuclear arms. |
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While plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons it also has civilian purposes, including power generation. |
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They are expert in producing the highly enriched uranium and plutonium that provide the explosive power. |
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The major limiting step is acquisition of the fissile material either enriched uranium or plutonium. |
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It forswears the use of commercial plutonium as a fuel, because of proliferation risks. |
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The amount of plutonium you need for a bomb is the size of a grapefruit and weighs about 20 pounds. |
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Several countries today separate plutonium and uranium from irradiated fuel for recycling. |
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Use of uranium in nuclear power plants produces plutonium, and that is a key material of choice of nuclear weapons builders. |
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The use of Australian uranium always involves the production of plutonium. |
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If 20 tonnes of highly radioactive liquefied uranium and plutonium fuel had leaked out of a reprocessing system you'd think there might be a bit of a fuss wouldn't you? |
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When my oldest child was a toddler, I treated illuminated screens like plutonium. |
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Now there are 75 tonnes of plutonium and 3,336 tonnes of uranium recovered from reprocessing, all stored and closely guarded but with no obvious use, at Sellafield. |
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For the next three months, workers labored around the clock to decontaminate the site of deadly plutonium. |
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But on his watch North Korea, the chief target of his ire, reprocessed enough plutonium to make six new nuclear weapons. |
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The plutonium is encapsulated in a heat-resistant ceramic shell, to prevent it from being released into the environment in the case of a launch accident. |
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Modern alchemists processed plutonium and manufactured nuclear bombs. |
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Internal contamination with plutonium, americium, or curium can occur through a variety of routes including ingestion, inhalation, or direct contact through wounds. |
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The Conference on Disarmament is seeking to start formal negotiations on banning production of fissile materials such as weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. |
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A truckload of plutonium waste has been hijacked on the waterfront. |
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So was the plutonium that went into the construction of the nuclear bomb Fat Man, which was detonated over Nagasaki. |
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Possibly as triumphant as ending World War II with a bomb made from plutonium developed here. |
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A failed high-altitude nuclear launch left a legacy of low-level plutonium contamination, and an old Agent Orange storage site caused some residual contamination as well. |
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There are tales of UFOs and plutonium, veiled critiques of macho money-grabbing rap and more electronic bleeps than in a digital telephone exchange. |
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I drank an International Proton Pale Ale and opted not to follow it up with a plutonium Porter. |
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The new elements were named neptunium and plutonium, respectively. |
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Experts estimate that reprocessing all the fuel rods would enable the production of 25 to 30 kilograms of plutonium, enough to build two to five nuclear devices. |
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Plutonium arrived from the Hanford plant in the form of liquid plutonium nitrate carried in small stainless steel flasks packed in cylinders the size of truck wheels. |
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The new a safety limit for plutonium in food will be one becquerel per kilogram. |
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Crucibles used to contain plutonium need to be able to withstand its strongly reducing properties. |
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It is powered by plutonium and armed with a laser and a jackhammer to punch through rock. |
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A critical mass of plutonium emits lethal amounts of neutrons and gamma rays. |
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Less soluble elements such as plutonium are subject to much slower redistribution. |
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The special relationship between the two countries has involved the exchange of classified scientific data and materials such as plutonium. |
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A plutonium implosion device was detonated in the lagoon in the Monte Bello Islands in Western Australia. |
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This gave the explosion time to build up momentum, similar in principle to a hammer hitting a nail, enabling less plutonium to be used. |
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Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. |
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Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. |
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With the commercialization of nuclear power, the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors. |
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Since uranium and plutonium are nuclear weapons materials, there have been proliferation concerns. |
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In pyrometallurgical fast reactors, the separated plutonium and uranium are contaminated by actinides and cannot be used for nuclear weapons. |
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The estimated world total of plutonium in the year 2000 was of 1,645 metric tons, of which 210 metric tons had been separated by reprocessing. |
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Several fuel types with differing plutonium destruction efficiencies are under study. |
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By July 1952 the separation plant was being used to separate plutonium and uranium from spent fuel. |
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The Purex process produces uranium, plutonium and fission products as output streams. |
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It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous. |
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The Fat Man bombs used in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, and in the bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945, had plutonium cores. |
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Near the melting point, the liquid plutonium has very high viscosity and surface tension compared to other metals. |
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The presence of these many allotropes makes machining plutonium very difficult, as it changes state very readily. |
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At room temperature, pure plutonium is silvery in color but gains a tarnish when oxidized. |
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The color shown by plutonium solutions depends on both the oxidation state and the nature of the acid anion. |
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Plutonium shows enormous, and reversible, reaction rates with pure hydrogen, forming plutonium hydride. |
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Cerium is used as a chemical simulant of plutonium for development of containment, extraction, and other technologies. |
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The highly directional nature of 5f orbitals is responsible for directional covalent bonds in molecules and complexes of plutonium. |
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If the alloying metal is sufficiently reductive, plutonium can be added in the form of oxides or halides. |
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The chemistry of plutonium was found to resemble uranium after a few months of initial study. |
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Enough plutonium was produced to make it the first synthetically made element to be visible with the unaided eye. |
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Furthermore, the rate of plutonium elimination in the excreta differed between species of animals by as much as a factor of five. |
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Animal studies found that a few milligrams of plutonium per kilogram of tissue is a lethal dose. |
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From 1945 to 1947, eighteen human test subjects were injected with plutonium without informed consent. |
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Any uranium or plutonium isotopes produced during those three years are left and the rod goes back into production. |
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The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977, each containing a 500 watt plutonium power source. |
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Isotopes and compounds of plutonium are radioactive and accumulate in bone marrow. |
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Even though alpha radiation cannot penetrate the skin, ingested or inhaled plutonium does irradiate internal organs. |
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Alpha particles generated by inhaled plutonium have been found to cause lung cancer in a cohort of European nuclear workers. |
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The skeleton, where plutonium accumulates, and the liver, where it collects and becomes concentrated, are at risk. |
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Once in the bloodstream, plutonium moves throughout the body and into the bones, liver, or other body organs. |
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A commonly cited quote by Ralph Nader states that a pound of plutonium dust spread into the atmosphere would be enough to kill 8 billion people. |
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However, calculations show that one pound of plutonium could kill no more than 2 million people by inhalation. |
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This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent with that of nerve gas. |
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Metallic plutonium is a fire hazard, especially if the material is finely divided. |
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In a moist environment, plutonium forms hydrides on its surface, which are pyrophoric and may ignite in air at room temperature. |
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Magnesium oxide sand is probably the most effective material for extinguishing a plutonium fire. |
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Around 11 metric tons of plutonium may be possessed by Japan alone, with 36 tons pending return after reprocessing in Britain and France. |
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The usual transportation of plutonium is through the more stable plutonium oxide in a sealed package. |
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Although some reactors of Mayak were shut down in 1987 and 1990, the facility keeps producing plutonium. |
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The town Zheleznogorsk was established in 1950 for the production of weapons-grade plutonium. |
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The reactor is part of Pakistan's programme to increase the production of weapons-grade plutonium. |
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But even with a reactor designed to produce bomb-grade plutonium, there are other difficulties in producing a plutonium weapon. |
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By comparison plutonium, uranium, and caesium tend to bind to soil particles. |
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The plutonium used on space probes is not the Plutonium-239 isotope used in atomic bombs and built up as a byproduct in nuclear power plants. |
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Researchers studying the crystalline structure of radioactive plutonium have happened onto the first plutonium-based superconductor. |
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The plutonium was sent to a place called the plutonium Finishing Plant. |
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Japan already has tons of plutonium on hand and no use for it, with most of its reactor fleet still offline since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. |
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These transfers essentially exchange ownership of plutonium between two countries, removing the need to physically move it. |
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The Khushab complex, located 200 km south of Islamabad is dedicated to the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. |
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The North's plutonium reactor was shut down in 2007 as part of international nuclear disarmament talks which have since stalled. |
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Over a third of the energy produced in most nuclear power plants comes from plutonium. |
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North Korea has completed reprocessing its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and is using plutonium extracted from them to make atomic bombs. |
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Spent nuclear fuel includes the fuel rods that are left over when uranium is converted to plutonium. |
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Nuclear fission converts some uranium in fuel rods to plutonium, which remains radioactive for about 240,000 years. |
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Densely ionizing radiation from plutonium and radon burrows microscopic tunnels through living tissues and knocks things out of kilter along these tracks. |
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The plutonium traces, which are too low to present a hazard to human health, were found at six spots far away from the plant's premises, The Japan Times reports. |
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Fast breeder reactors gain their name for their ability to use fast unmoderated neutrons to breed fissile plutonium and possibly higher transuranics from uranium. |
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Unfortunately for humanity, politicians preferred uranium nuclear reactors simply because their main purpose was to provide weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. |
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Thorium reactors burn waste actinides, including plutonium generated in uranium reactors, increasing power generation, while at the same time reducing problem waste. |
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A programme will be developed to study howA thorium might be used as a possible fuel at nuclear power plants, in addition to other fuels usingA uranium and plutonium. |
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The system will combine 9 MeV transmission imaging radiography with automatic identification of high atomic number materials such as tungsten, lead, uranium, or plutonium. |
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The Big Six and Iran have signed a three-page document on redesigning Iran's heavy water reactor at Arak so it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium. |
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West Lake's thorium-230 and actinium-227 have been ranked along with plutonium, americium and neptunium as among the most radioactively dangerous materials known. |
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However no human being is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium, and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies. |
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Contamination by plutonium oxide has resulted from nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents, including military nuclear accidents where nuclear weapons have burned. |
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The tests were used to create diagnostic tools to determine the uptake of plutonium in the body in order to develop safety standards for working with plutonium. |
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This was reduced to one microgram in July 1945 after animal studies found that the way plutonium distributed itself in bones was more dangerous than radium. |
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Only after the announcement of the first atomic bombs was the existence and name of plutonium made known to the public by the Manhattan Project's Smyth Report. |
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While it was still by no means clear that enough plutonium could be produced for use in bombs by the war's end, Hanford was by early 1945 in operation. |
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Eventually, the lab at Chicago also conducted its own plutonium injection experiments using different animals such as mice, rabbits, fish, and even dogs. |
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Plutonium alloys can be produced by adding a metal to molten plutonium. |
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The anomalous behavior of plutonium is caused by its electronic structure. |
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Twenty radioactive isotopes of plutonium have been characterized. |
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The resistivity of plutonium at room temperature is very high for a metal, and it gets even higher with lower temperatures, which is unusual for metals. |
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Human radiation experiments studying plutonium were conducted without informed consent, and several criticality accidents, some lethal, occurred after the war. |
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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. |
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Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, deliberate discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide particulates. |
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While these countries reprocess the fuel carrying out single plutonium cycles, India is the only country known to be planning multiple plutonium recycling schemes. |
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These included a new uranium metal plant at Springfields in Lancashire, and nuclear reactors and plutonium processing facilities at Windscale in Cumbria. |
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Its first big project was Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the gigantic government installation that produced plutonium for the first nuclear weapons. |
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