Word: fissionability
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...when words like fission, double-helix, and plutonium are on the tip of every layman's tongue, books about science, or better yet books by scientists, are a sure sell...
...further expansion of the nuclear program, or even just a slowed rate of increase coupled with speeded-up development of conservation and soft energy technologies. Some phaseout plans allow for continued construction and use of nukes well into the twenty-first century before other energy sources can completely replace fission power. But we want, and demand, more: no more plants must be built, all construction must stop where it is now, and we must move immediately towards a non-nuclear future through intensified conservation measures, widespread use of solar power and development of alternative, safe, renewable, decentralized energy sources...
This happened during World War II, when the nation was galvanized by fear that Germany would produce the first atomic bomb, and the Government-funded, $2 billion Manhattan Project unlocked the secrets of nuclear fission. In 1961 President John Kennedy, stung by Sputnik and later by Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's orbiting the earth, decreed that the U.S. should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. A synergistic exchange of technology among Government, science and industry had Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walking on the moon five months ahead of the deadline...
...plumbing goes, nuclear power plants exceed Rube Goldberg's wildest fantasies. The basic idea sounds simple-unstable heavy atoms, like those of uranium 235, break up (fission). Scattered in all directions are electrically neutral particles called neutrons as well as fission products such as shortlived radioactive xenon, krypton and iodine. The neutrons hit still other atoms like errant billiard balls in a chain reaction that produces heat. But obtaining useful energy from this process can be extremely complex. Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant has two pressurized water reactors. Such reactors are based on a design pioneered...
...dawn of the nuclear age, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis L. Strauss predicted in 1954 that atomic fission would produce electricity so abundantly and cheaply that it would not have to be metered: the American people could just pay a low monthly charge and use as much as they wished. That naive optimism has long since vanished in the wake of zooming construction costs, endless delays in getting plants built and growing public opposition. In 22 years of commercial operation, nuclear power has won only a modest role in the nation's total energy picture. Now, in the shock...