Word: fissioned
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Uranium is a tricky element. As it comes from the mines, it contains only .7% of the active isotope U-235, whose atoms "fission" (split in two) with a big release of energy. Nearly all the rest is 11-238, an idle isotope which will not fission naturally, though its heavy nucleus contains about the same energy...
When natural uranium is put in a chain-reacting pile, its U-235 atoms start splitting and yielding energy, "fission products" and free neutrons. Some of the neutrons are needed to split more U-235 atoms and keep the reaction going. Others are absorbed by impurities or escape from the pile. The rest enter the atoms of U-238, ultimately turn them into plutonium...
...plutonium or other nuclear fuel thus produced is larger than the U-235 consumed, the pile could continue in operation for a very long time. First the original U-235 would be consumed, yielding energy and plutonium made out of 11-238. Then some of the plutonium would fission, yielding energy and creating more atomic fuel. Theoretically, the process might continue until all the 11-238 is consumed. Natural uranium could yield something like 140 times as much energy as it would if only its U-235 were utilized...
...Ashes. The AEC does not claim immediate 100% efficiency. The accumulation of radioactive fission products as impurities in the uranium, for instance, will certainly cause trouble long before the action is complete. But the contaminated uranium could be purified and "recycled." The AEC did not say so, but there is a possibility that when the breeding process has been refined, the uranium can be run through the reactor again & again until essentially all of it has been turned into energy. The world might thus have a practically inexhaustible source of nuclear fuel...
Arthur Godfrey has confessed to a growing interest in "atomic energy and fission, nuclear fission, and all those things." Fortnight ago he invited Physicist Dr. Wendell C. Peacock to give a brief atomic run-through on Arthur Godfrey and His Friends (Wed. 8 p.m., CBS-TV). The interview stalled when jittery bobby-soxers in the studio audience began to rustle impatiently for the program's handsome, 21-year-old Crooner Bill Lawrence. Scolded Godfrey: "I'm not very happy about the reception you folks give to a serious discussion when you come in here ... I'd like...