Word: fissioning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...neat theory was destroyed when the AEC announced a preliminary analysis. That report indicated that the Chinese test used "a fission device employing U-235." Unless the Russians in friendlier years got the Lop Nor bomb work started with a goodly amount of U-235, the Chinese must somehow have scraped up the electricity to make the stuff, or less likely, invented a new and better process...
Implosion. Another nugget of information in the AEC report was word that the Chinese depended on an implosion (inward-striking detonation) of chemicals to compress their U-235 and make it fission. Such a device is more effective than shooting two chunks of fissionable material toward each other in an apparatus like a gun barrel, as was done in the U.S. bomb exploded over Hiroshima. The U.S. also used the implosion method in its earliest nuclear weapons. Although a surprising number of commentators assumed that use of implosion showed advanced skill by the Chinese, the AEC did not agree...
Damaged Spots. The General Electric dating method, which was developed with Air Force backing, depends on the fact that nearly all rocks, including tektites and impactites, contain small traces of uranium. The uranium atoms split, at a slow, known rate and the fission fragments damage the glassy material in which they are embedded. The damaged spots are microscopic, but they can be made visible by a special etching technique. When they are carefully counted and compared with the amount of uranium present, those spots tell how long they have been accumulating and the date when the rock solidified...
...simple fact is that human group behavior is complex and variegated. Lay language often does not do justice to this quality. Popular translations of sociological literature can frequently be compared to the difference between Disney's exploding pingpong balls on mousetraps and an original essay in fission by Albert Einstein...
...there is potential danger in any nuclear plant. After it has run for a while, the fuel in its core (Con Ed plans to use 113 tons of uranium oxide) is contaminated with fiercely radioactive fission products. If this unpleasant stuff got spread around the countryside by any sort of explosion, it would do as much harm as the fallout from an atom bomb. Millions of people live within a few miles of Con Ed's projected installation. To reduce this danger to a minimum, the plant proposed for the Borough of Queens, on New York's East...