Word: plutonium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nuclear plants; then--last week--the announcement of a sale of enriched uranium to India. Perhaps the best example, however, of the Carter administration's softening of its earlier stand on nuclear energy is in its attitude towards the liquid metal fast-breeder reactor and the deadly plutonium it employs. The story of the watering down of the anti-breeder position is a many-faceted one involving Executive-Congressional power struggles, the background and geographical origins of individuals involved in the dispute, and questions of illusion versus reality in the creation of a national energy policy. In the end, though...
...from the broader, far more compelling and important opinions he voiced in the previous fall's campaign. The risk of further nuclear proliferation, the President said in withdrawing administration support from Clinch River, "would be vastly increased by the further spread of sensitive technologies which entail direct access to plutonium or other weapons-useable material...
...liberal Senators like Frank Church (D-Ida.) found themselves arguing in favor of home-state nuclear interests and against non-proliferation. Church called Carter's policy "a formula for nuclear isolation." Tennessee's pork-barreling delegation plus other, more conservative members of Congress who don't seem to find plutonium all that dangerous, took more blatantly pro-nuclear positions. Rep. Mike McCormick (D-Wash.), a big breeder booster, said "not developing the breeder is like saying we shouldn't have automobiles because somebody can make a Molotov cocktail out of gasoline...
...guarded secret, but the principles are well known to physicists. Neutron bombs are essentially small thermonuclear devices, or H-bombs, the explosive equivalent of about 1,000 tons of TNT. Unlike the earliest A-bombs, which involved the fission-or splitting-of such radioactive materials as uranium and plutonium, H-bombs work by fusing isotopes of the simplest and lightest element, hydrogen, into slightly heavier atoms of helium, although they still require a small fission "trigger" to reach the sunlike temperatures (tens of millions of degrees) required for fusion...
Caldicott, who now lives in the United States, emphasized the inability of technology to destroy, safely and adequately, dangerous nuclear wastes. The man-made element plutonium is a particular danger since it is both a carcinogen and a key component in nuclear weapons. She said in her speech, sponsored by Natural Sciences 150, "The Biology of Cancer...