Word: fissionable
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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With the discovery of fission," C.P. Snow once wrote, "physicists became, almost overnight, the most important military resource a nation-state could call upon." The unleashing of the awesome destructive power of the atom turned physicists into politicians and politicians into physicists. Scientists were forced to reckon with the repercussions of what they had wrought, while political and military leaders had to comprehend the power they held at their fingertips. In Richard Rhodes' epic and fascinating Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon & Schuster; 731 pages; $32.50), a sequel to his Pulitzer prizewinning The Making of the Atomic...
While the U.S. or Russia could make a miniaturized bomb with as little as 6 lbs. of bomb-grade plutonium-239, a beginner could hope to produce only a much larger, cruder device from his 18 lbs. The fissionable metal for a bomb core has to be melted down and fashioned into a virtually perfect sphere about the size of a tennis ball -- called a pit -- a tricky process that takes a well- equipped nuclear laboratory. To make the bomb reach critical mass and set off a chain reaction -- nuclear fission -- you have to make the sphere implode...
Nuclear weapons in the hands of extremists willing to use them would produce terrorism of a wholly new magnitude. The central logic of terrorism is to maximize horror and shock, producing a blaze of publicity and attention for the cause it represents. By that measure, the crudest of fission bombs set off in a modern city, vaporizing entire blocks, would make the crimes of Carlos and his ilk rank as little more than pinpricks...
...About 18 lbs. (8 kg.) of this enriched plutonium is needed to produce one fission bomb. The rods now contain enough material to make four or five bombs...
...true." says Chris Kagay, '94, another knowledgeble Quadling. "In fact, the Manhattan Project used the squash courts to build the first fission reactor. Of course, at that time it was at the University of Chicago...