Word: fissioned
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...efficiency of the device the French set off in the Sahara is shrouded in secrecy, but some top atomic experts estimate that it was roughly as efficient as the early U.S. bombs, i.e., it achieved fission of 2% of the plutonium it contained. (Current rate of fission in the U.S. bombs is estimated at 10%.) Says one Western European nuclear physicist well acquainted with the French atomic program: "They are ten years behind the Americans, seven years behind the British...
...Homogeneous Reactor Experiment No. 2) is an attempt to avoid some of the worst disadvantages of solid-fuel reactors. Since solid uranium is quickly corroded at high temperature, it must be enclosed in a more resistant metal such as zirconium or stainless steel. As the uranium fissions, it generates gases that tend to burst the container. Other fission products absorb neutrons, and when too much of this "poison" has accumulated, it makes the nuclear reaction slow down or stop. At intervals, the fuel elements must be removed and their unburned uranium re-purified by a difficult and expensive chemical process...
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...
...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...