Word: plutonium
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...political convictions detonated four car bombs in Dublin and a town to the north, killing 28 people. The event gave special interest to Author McPhee's thesis, which is that right now one fairly skilled technician, using easily obtainable equipment and information, and easily stolen uranium 235 or plutonium 239, could make a nuclear fission bomb. The bomb certainly would be small enough to fit into a Volkswagen, and perhaps into a golf...
With two nuclear power plants operating and two more under construction-potentially capable of providing enough plutonium to produce more than a score of modest bombs-India is on the threshold of atomic prowess. That prospect alone filled many Indians with pride this week and helped bolster Mrs. Gandhi's strike-embattled administration (TIME, May 20). Yet many others argued that nuclear bombs will have no effect on the economic ills of a country where incomes continue to plummet and prices rise faster than a mushroom cloud. As a Hindustan Times editorial observed last week: "A nuclear bang, albeit...
Critics of nuclear power plants have long warned of the danger of contamination from Plutonium 239, a highly dangerous byproduct of nuclear fission that has a half-life of a quarter million years. But asbestos has a nearly infinite half-life and unlike Plutonium 239, the air-borne fibers cannot be buried in salt mines far below the earth's surface to remove them from populated areas. The danger is ubiquitous, increasing and well-nigh invisible...
Easier Than Heroin. Taylor, for one, is convinced that terrorists could actually fashion the stolen material into a bomb in a matter of weeks. To achieve the biggest bang, the bombmakers would probably choose to convert their purloined material into a metal. Plutonium and U-235 can be transported as compounds that do not readily lend themselves to the making of the most efficient weapons, but the techniques for purification are, says Taylor, in some respects no more difficult than refining heroin in an illicit laboratory...
...into the mass at the other end. The density of the material in the combined masses of U-235 suddenly increased enough so that the fast-moving neutrons triggered a chain reaction and the bomb exploded. The Nagasaki bomb used a more efficient method: a hollow sphere of plutonium was enclosed by shaped explosive charges. When the explosive was detonated, it sent much of its force inward, crushing the plutonium into a solid ball, a "supercritical" mass that released even more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. With the proper explosive and some plutonium fashioned into the proper shape, a skilled...