Word: fissionability
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...original cause of the accident is still unknown. Presumably, enough plutonium somehow got into the tank to support a fission chain reaction. The resulting burst of radiation ionized the air and caused the blue flash. The reacting liquid probably boiled, separating the plutonium and stopping the reaction in a few seconds. That was too late for Kelley...
...fission process, nuclear reactors produce a gas-Krypton 85-which hangs in the atmosphere. The U.S. can take careful readings of Krypton 85 in the air, subtract what it knows it has put there, subtract what the British have put there, and assign the balance to Russian origin. Making an even less exact calculation, U.S. experts guesstimate that the Russians must have something like 3,000 nuclear weapons. The U.S. may have at least three times that, but it does not make much difference: nuclear parity is achieved when each has enough to destroy the other...
Precious Dust. Worst damage would be done by a nuclear explosion, fission or fusion. It would contaminate the lunar atmosphere with radioactive gases and sprinkle the moon's surface with radioactive debris. Almost as bad would be the big, backward-pushing retrorockets that would be needed to bring a small packet of instruments to a soft landing on the moon; they would require the release of so much burned fuel that the moon's tenuous atmosphere would never be the same again...
GENEVA, a place where statesmen once felt in command of history, was jammed last week with men who shape the world. As 5,000 scientists from 67 countries met for the second U.N. Atoms for Peace conference, the fission-and-fusion future unfolded in a staggering display of brains and machinery. Nobody topped the U.S. effort, a hugely successful reactor exhibit spiced with news that the world's first controlled thermonuclear reaction may have been achieved at Los Alamos. For a report on one of the biggest scientific meetings ever held, see SCIENCE, Monster Conference...
...Much more interesting to the public was the general feeling among the scientist delegates, as expressed in interviews or press conferences. The first Geneva conference, 1955, was notable for unaccustomed fraternization between scientists from Communist and non-Communist countries. It also took the secrecy lid off the technology of fission reactors that burn uranium or other heavy elements...