Word: fissionability
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...appointed him to the General Advisory Committee. From his inside vantage point he could watch and play a role in the measured march of the nuclear weapons: first the Abomb; then better A-bombs; then the Russian Abomb; then the H-bomb; then the Russian H-bomb; then the fission-fusion-fission bomb. Libby saw why AECommissioners were rarely lighthearted and gay. Then in 1954 he became a commissioner himself, by appointment of President Eisenhower on the recommendation of AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss. When he moved to Washington with Leonor and their ten-year-old twin daughters, Libby brought along...
...There would be no radioactive fission products. This is important because the safe disposal of this dangerous material imposes a heavy cost burden on a uranium power reactor...
...achieved. Nothing has come into the open, and Atomic Energy Commission officials refuse, sometimes nervously, to answer questions touching remotely on the subject. But the rumors have enough substance to worry electric power companies. In the absence of assurances to the contrary, some of them are afraid that the fission (uranium) power plants they intend to build in the near future may be hopelessly outmoded before they are finished...
...reported to be working hard on this radical device, but the only fusion reaction demonstrated so far is an uncontrolled one: the hydrogen bomb. In the bomb, light elements (isotopes of hydrogen and probably lithium) are caused to join into helium by the intense heat of an exploding fission (uranium) bomb. Something more tractable is needed to start a fusion reaction in a peaceful power plant...
...megaton bomb (equivalent in energy to 10 million tons of TNT), says Libby, creates 1,100 Ibs. of radioactive fission products. Airborne for one day and then spread evenly over an area of 100,000 square miles, it would give each unsheltered person a dose of 67 roentgens per day. This is not far from the strength of the "snow" that fell on the Marshall Islanders.* They survived because they were evacuated promptly and cared for well, but as Libby remarks in an understatement, evacuation of 100,000 square miles (more than twice the size of New York State...