Word: nuclear
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...treatment for cancer is the use of "radioactive isotopes from the heart of the smashed atom." Now radioactive isotopes have something to do with atomic energy, but by no stretch of the imagination do they reside in the hearts of atoms nor are they released in the process of nuclear fission. There are several other bad errors...
Burn-Out. Plutonium is fissionable and a fine nuclear fuel, but the first reactors did not produce enough of it to replace the U-235 consumed. So their nuclear fuel gradually "burned out," leaving U-238 as a sort of ash. Thus, the reactors of the early atomic age could utilize only a very small part of the uranium fed into them...
...breeders, or converters, will lessen the waste, presumably by causing more neutrons to be absorbed byU-238. If the amount of 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...
...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...
...full, round figure alerted Washington's amateur physicists. According to fairly dependable estimates, the Hiroshima bomb developed not more than 10% of the fission energy present in its nuclear explosive. Perfect efficiency (probably impossible) would therefore give about ten times as much power, certainly not 1,000 times as much. So, figured the amateur physicists, the talkative Senator must have meant a bomb made out of hydrogen. It is well known that the conversion of hydrogen into helium is the nuclear reaction that gives the sun its energy...