Word: plutonium
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SAFEGUARDS. One of the byproducts of nuclear plants is plutonium, the critical ingredient in nuclear weapons. Several critics led by Theodore Taylor, a onetime atom-bomb designer for the AEC, fear that terrorists may steal the material. An amount the size of a softball, Taylor says, could be used to make a bomb that would be small enough to be carried in a car and powerful enough to kill tens of thousands of people. The AEC has tightened existing security restrictions for the transportation and handling of plutonium-indicating in the process that previous safeguards were less than adequate...
...called the fast-breeder, a name derived from its unique capability: during the chain reaction, surplus neutrons from the atoms of U-235 in its core bombard a surrounding blanket of U-238, a much more plentiful but nonfissionable form of uranium, and transmute large amounts of it into plutonium. This fissionable byproduct can then be used as a fuel in other breeders. Thus breeders should be able to stretch existing uranium supplies for several centuries. One big drawback: the fission wastes are highly radioactive and extremely difficult to store...
...palm-size pacemakers, developed by the ARCO Nuclear Co. of Leechburg, Pa., with a grant from the Atomic Energy Commission, use no batteries. They contain 400 mg. of the radioactive isotope plutonium 238. As it decays, the plutonium generates heat. That raises the temperature of a thermocouple system, which converts the heat to electrical power for the pacemaker. The device is similar to the nuclear pacemaker inserted in a French patient in 1970 and now used by 24 Americans. Both pacemakers are expected to operate for at least ten years. That is long enough to make the previous chest operation...
...report pointed out that it is not only the superpowers that pose a threat. Included in the nations that have not yet signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are India and Israel. The U.S. estimated that India has on hand 95 kilograms of "unsafeguarded plutonium" - meaning plutonium produced without international inspection. Israel, said the report, has 40 kilograms. Only five to ten kilograms are sufficient to make a nuclear weapon that could destroy a medium-sized city...
...original fuel (fissionable uranium 235, or plutonium) is surrounded by a "blanket" of nonfissionable uranium 238, which absorbs neutrons from the chain reaction in the core. These neutrons transmute the U-238 in the blanket into plutonium, which can fuel another breeder...