Word: plutonium
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...Perverse Plutonium. Another problem fuel is plutonium, which may some day become the principal source of nuclear fission energy. Last week the Argonne National Laboratory dedicated its new $4,000,000 Fuel Fabrication Facility, whose principal job is to make fractious plutonium behave...
...technical area of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory is a building on the mysteriously named DP Site. In one of its rooms Technician Cecil W. Kelley, 38, was working alone last week, adding a solvent to a 225-gal. tank. It was a routine part of a process to recover plutonium from waste materials. During his ten years at Los Alamos he had done the same chore about 75 times. This time was different. When he turned on the stirring apparatus, a bright blue flash bloomed out of the tank...
...original cause of the accident is still unknown. Presumably, enough plutonium somehow got into the tank to support a fission chain reaction. The resulting burst of radiation ionized the air and caused the blue flash. The reacting liquid probably boiled, separating the plutonium and stopping the reaction in a few seconds. That was too late for Kelley...
...Richland, Wash., G.E. operates the Government-owned Hanford plutonium works, where every year it produces isotopes with 140 times the radioactivity of the world supply of radium, is conducting radiation studies on plants and animals...
...Washington," shouted the master of ceremonies one evening last week, as 2,000 residents of Richland (pop. 23,000) gathered to watch a simulated atomic explosion and a bonfire lit by an atomic fuse. Cause for celebration: after 15 years as a company town servicing the big-secret plutonium works known as the Hanford Atomic Project, Richland had voted itself out from under the paternalistic wings of the Atomic Energy Commission and General Electric, prime AEC contractor. And the vote had carried in the face of upcoming difficulties for the town...