Word: fissionable
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...panic. Alarmed by recent announcements of sizable fail-out increases over North America since the U.S. and Soviet nuclear tests in October, a subcommittee of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy held hearings last week, listened to scientists' reports addressed to two pivotal questions: How much of fission's byproducts -notably strontium 90, which enters the body in food, accumulates in the bones and may cause leukemia and bone cancer -can the human body safely tolerate? How much has been injected into the air and at what rate is it coming down...
...atomic power, scientists have dreamed of converting nuclear energy directly into electricity. The potential is clear from a simple statistic: a single pound of uranium 235 has the same fuel energy as 1,500 Ibs. of coal. But present atomic power plants must go through costly intermediate steps: nuclear fission produces heat, the heat is used to generate steam, the steam drives a turbine, the turbine generates the electricity...
...inside a vacuum-sealed can that contains liquid cesium. The uranium is enriched with U-235. Around the cesium is a circulating coolant (see diagram). When the device is lowered inside a reactor, the uranium is bombarded by the neutrons generated by the reactor, causing the U-235 to fission and give off intense heat...
After twelve hours, the device had to be shut down because the uranium fission produces gas as a byproduct that dilutes the plasma and dangerously raises the pressure inside the can. In future plasma thermocouples, this can be solved by bleeding off the gas. But the cesium plasma proved to have a thermoelectric efficiency much higher than any combination of solid metals...
...difference: Sr-89 decays faster, losing half its activity in 54 days, v. 20 years for Sr-90. But of the two, Sr-89 may be a greater hazard to the unborn child, warned Dr. Arthur R. Schulert of Columbia University's Lamont Geological Observatory, because an atomic fission bomb produces 160 times as much of it, and 20 times as much as appeared in milk after weapons tests. While Sr-89 does not remain active long enough to harm an adult, it may be a threat to children (a Canadian boy has been found with three times...