Word: fissionability
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...fast-breeder, a name derived from its unique capability: during the chain reaction, surplus neutrons from the atoms of U-235 in its core bombard a surrounding blanket of U-238, a much more plentiful but nonfissionable form of uranium, and transmute large amounts of it into plutonium. This fissionable byproduct can then be used as a fuel in other breeders. Thus breeders should be able to stretch existing uranium supplies for several centuries. One big drawback: the fission wastes are highly radioactive and extremely difficult to store...
WASHINGTON--Despite widespread news stories that the White House staff has split into feuding camps over the Watergate affair, two Nixon staffers said yesterday that "the picture of fission is not correct" and that operations this week are "pretty much" back on schedule...
...deposits being tapped by nuclear wells lie beneath much of the nation's vast reserve of oil shale, which one day might well become a major source of domestic energy supplies. If the blasts continue, says Biochemist H. Peter Metzger, they will leave immense amounts of radioactive fission products in the earth, posing a lingering danger to workers who may some day mine the shale...
EVERY war makes its peculiar contributions to the language. There was still a sense of heroics in the neologisms of World War I: over the top into no man's land. World War II created a new terminology of mass death: fission, fire storm, and the final solution. From Korea, the first confrontation with Asian Communism, we acquired the widespread use of gooks and brainwashing...
...decays at a known rate, and that 1.7 billion years ago-the approximate age of the Oklo deposit -U-235 made up 3% of raw uranium deposits. This is roughly the same concentration that is created in artificially enriched uranium fuels and thus is enough to support sustained fission...