Word: fissionable
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tower shot" that stirred up millions of tons of quick-settling coral dust. First radioactive material from the May 21 explosion was brought home by the tuna boat Stiruga Maru. Analyzed by Dr. Kenjiro Kimura of Tokyo University, it proved to contain a familiar array of fission products-ruthenium, rhodium, tellurium, iodine, cerium, neodymium, etc.-as well as uranium 237 and neptunium 239. This combination of elements indicated that the explosion was the "fission-fusion-fission" type, which gets much of its energy from the fission of normally inactive uranium...
...Teller believes that the job can be done, given enough time and effort. "I am confident," he said, "that controlled thermonuclear reactors will eventually be constructed. I do not believe that the power derived from such reactors will compete at an early date with conventional energy sources or with fission [uranium] reactors...
When thermonuclear reactors are finally achieved, said Teller, they will have several advantages. Their fuel, deuterium, is inexhaustible and it needs no processing after it has been separated from common hydrogen. They will become highly radioactive because of neutrons released within them, but unlike atomic fission reactors they will not contain large amounts of dangerous radioactive material that might be scattered by an accident. On the other hand, they will probably be harder to operate and maintain...
Tipoff ingredient was the U-237. In the original atomic bomb of 1945 the active substance was U-235, the rare uranium isotope that fissions (splits) readily when struck by slow-speed neutrons. U-238, the abundant isotope of uranium, does not fission in this way, but when it is struck by high-speed neutrons from a sufficiently powerful detonator, it undergoes a variety of nuclear reactions. Some of its atoms split, splattering into middleweight atoms (fission products) and giving off enormous energy. Other U-238 atoms absorb a neutron, then eject two neutrons, turning into atoms of telltale...
...presence of U-237 as well as fission products in the dust that fell on Tokyo convinced Dr. Sugiura that the Soviet bomb of last November was a "super-U-bomb" like the U.S. Bikini job of 1954 (then popularly known as the hydrogen bomb). In short, it evidently got most of its energy from the fission of cheap, plentiful...