Word: fissioned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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They have another prime reason: after ten years of secret planning, the U.S. is on the verge of developing a true "clean bomb," with enormous implications for both brush-fire war and big-war tactics. It is the neutron bomb, triggered by a fission process, topped off by a small hydrogen (fusion) explosion, designed to bombard enemy troops in a specific area with millions of fatal, invisible neutron "bullets." The neutron bomb does not damage property, scatters virtually no radioactive fallout, cannot be detected. Friendly troops could enter the area shortly after the bomb had been used. And although...
Perverse Plutonium. Another problem fuel is plutonium, which may some day become the principal source of nuclear fission energy. Last week the Argonne National Laboratory dedicated its new $4,000,000 Fuel Fabrication Facility, whose principal job is to make fractious plutonium behave...
...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...
...Much Debris? AEC Biology and Medicine Director Charles L. Dunham, first to testify, carried a thick sheaf of papers that contained the biggest news of the hearings. Since 1945, Dunham revealed, the world's three atomic powers have exploded bombs with a total fission yield of more than 91,000 kilotons. The U.S. and Britain have been responsible for more than two-thirds of it. But the Russians contributed 21,000 of their 25,560-kiloton total in 1957-58 alone, raising the debris in the stratosphere to a record level...
...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...