Word: plutonium
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...have-nots is that the treaty's stipulations might impede their atomic progress; what most worries the U.S. and Russia is that each advance brings the have-nots closer to an atomic-weaponry potential. West Germany has a new "fast-breeder" reactor that generates electricity-and produces enough plutonium to build 36 A-bombs of Hiroshima firepower per year. According to some estimates, India's one existing reactor and three abuilding ones will make enough fissionable fuel for India to produce 15 bombs of 20-kiloton strength by 1990. France has six reactors, Italy three, Japan...
...order for such a bomb to explode, the fissionable core material of plutonium (sketch point E) must be raised to a supercritical mass, the point where sufficient neutrons are released and react with the core material to sustain violent nuclear reactions. In the implosion bomb shown in the sketch, shaped charges of high explosives (B) are simultaneously triggered by detonators (A), the force of the explosions being directed inward, rapidly compressing the plutonium around a beryllium neutron source (D). In less than a millionth of a second, the supercritical mass explodes...
...string of sophisticated snooping devices on China's perimeter. Drone planes, high-flying U-2s and satellite cameras record roads, railways, steel mills, oil wells, nuclear plants, missile ranges and troop movements. U.S. Government analysts early spotted China's gaseous diffusion plant at Lanchow, the plutonium reactor at Paotow, and the atom-bomb test site at Lop Nor in the Taklamakan wastes of Sinkiang. They have predicted well in advance the timing of all three Chinese atomic explosions...
...Madrid and Washington, the two governments revealed that only one of the three recovered bombs had actually survived the fall intact. Some of the TNT detonators on the other two had exploded on impact and ruptured the shell casing, permitting some radioactive plutonium and uranium to scatter over 18 acres in the impact area. However, there was no cause for alarm, Spain's Nuclear Energy Board quickly assured. Of the 2,000 "potentially exposed" people in the area, 1,800 had been examined thus far, and none had received a dangerous dose. What is more, added the board, "there...
...Iron Curtain. West ern nations are now in the mood to consider bids from the satellites-provided that they agree to let inspectors check regularly that the atoms are used only for peaceful power. This could be difficult, because one inevitable by-product of the reactors is plutonium, which is a major ingredient in nuclear bombs...