Plutonium has captured the attention of scientists since its discovery in the early 1940s. This enigmatic element has an important role to play in emerging energy technologies like nuclear batteries ...

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), whose tenth review conference is coming up in August, is in trouble, and not only because of the crescendo of complaints about the failure of the ...

G. Edward Bixby’s piece offering a “scientific view” of the potential level of harm from a single plutonium atom (Aug. 1) is a fine example of using false logic to “win” an argument. The actual “point ...

While studying legacy contaminated soil samples from the Plutonium Finishing Plant waste crib at the Hanford Site (Richland, WA), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers located and ...

Wow, the things you learn on a B Reactor tour. When the first enriched plutonium was ready for transport away from Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the person in charge had it placed in a ...

The United Kingdom’s last plutonium reprocessing plant, B205, located in Sellafield in northern England, will shut down by the end of 2020. It will bring an end to the era of plutonium separation in ...

Atomic bombs work via a process called nuclear fission that involves atom splitting. Shortly after scientists discovered nuclear fission, the possibility of a bomb was quickly realized. Albert ...

So, the “single particle” of plutonium is more like a mini-dust bunny infected with “millions or billions of atoms” ( Michael Ketterer, Aug. 8, Open Forum). He describes a micron-sized particle which ...