Word: cadmium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most experts believe that the current problem is directly traceable to the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, factories and smelting operations and, to a lesser extent, auto emissions. When tall smokestacks vent their fumes, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and traces of such toxic metals as mercury and cadmium mix with water vapor in the atmosphere. Chemical reactions follow that form dilute solutions of nitric and sulfuric acids-acid rain...
...nuclear reactor, such a chain reaction is kept under control by "absorbers"-usually boron or cadmium rods. These capture neutrons that might otherwise split more atoms. But if the fissile material is pure enough, and sufficiently compressed, as in a bomb, the chain reaction speeds up. Heat accumulates, and the material blows apart to produce the nuclear age's familiar mushroom cloud...
...others turned out to be relatively pure. The biggest polluters, not surprisingly, are France, Italy and Spain. Thus they will have to bear the biggest part of the cost of the more than $10 billion program. The proposed treaty includes a blacklist of banned substances (for example, mercury, cadmium, radioactive materials) and a gray list of those that will be tolerated in specified quantities. All factories and sewage systems will be required to install antipollution devices, and new installations will have to conform to treaty specifications...
...catch these particles, the physicists placed a sealed container of deuterium, or heavy water, 11.2 meters (37 ft.) from the reactor. Immersed in the liquid were ten helium-filled tubes wired to an external oscilloscope. The detection apparatus was shielded in lead and cadmium cylinders and a foot-thick "pot" to block everything but neutrinos. As the particles barreled through the heavy water, some scored bull's-eye hits on the nuclei of its hydrogen atoms, which contain an extra neutron. These collisions produced other particles, including more neutrons that struck the helium-filled tubes and registered...