Word: atomically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...witnessed such a week of more or less simultaneous shocks since early November 1956, when a British-French-Israeli force was invading Egypt and the Soviets were crushing the Hungarian revolt, or since mid-October 1964, when the Soviet Central Committee deposed Nikita Khrushchev, the Chinese exploded their first atom bomb and Britain elected a Labor government in a remarkable upset...
...PLUTONIUM CONNECTION (PBS NOVA Series, March 9, 7:30 p.m. E.D.T.). It is no secret that ounces of plutonium-a byproduct of nuclear power reactors-could be used to produce a homemade atom bomb. To demonstrate that possibility NOVA commissioned a 20-year-old undergraduate chemistry student to try to design an A-bomb in five weeks, working alone and using only published information available to the general public. The result: a blueprint for a plutonium bomb with an estimated destructive capability of 100 to 1,000 tons of TNT. The student (portrayed by Actor John Holecek) describes the ease...
Repulsive Charges. To meet that deadline, U.S. scientists, starting with a technique devised in the Soviet Union, will have to develop an almost entirely new technology. Unlike nuclear fission -the splitting of a heavy atom into two lighter ones-fusion occurs when two light atoms collide and merge into a heavier one. The reaction releases considerably more energy than fission. Starting the chain reaction that causes fission (Abomb) explosions and powers today's nuclear reactors is relatively easy; basically, all that is required is the bringing together of enough fissionable uranium or plutonium in the right shape. The neutrons...
...Cimarron River plutonium plant about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City. The facility makes plutonium pellet fuel rods for the breeder reactor, a second-generation nuclear power plant now being developed. Silkwood was one of the most active members of local 5-283 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. She was deeply concerned about how plutonium was handled. And with good reason. Inhalation or swallowing of a few specks of the radioactive element can result in cancer. Exposure to slightly greater quantities can cause radiation sickness and death. Furthermore, an amount of plutonium about the size...
Bronowski, who was born in Poland, went to England as a child and received his doctorate in mathematics at Cambridge. He turned to his self-appointed task of blending science and human values after working on a statistical study of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atom bomb. While continuing his scientific research, most recently at the Salk Institute in San Diego, he turned out a wide variety of books including The Western Intellectual Tradition and two volumes on William Blake...