Word: plutonium
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...general was probably not telling the whole story. Early, inefficient bombs released only about 1% of the "fission energy" of their uranium or plutonium. Bull's better bomb may have raised the figure to 2%. But without any new principle, a bomb can be 50 times as powerful as the model the general hinted at. One such bomb, skillfully placed, could do a Hiroshima job on all of Greater New York...
...others: neptunium, No. 93; plutonium, No. 94; americium...
Curium can be made by bombarding plutonium with alpha particles, or americium with neutrons. Now that it has been isolated, the scientists working under the Atomic Energy Commission (the only ones privileged to play around with plutonium and its relatives) can try to build up an Element...
...Interest. The U.S. used its successful graphite piles to produce the explosive element plutonium. The Germans, according to Heisenberg, realized in a vague way that this was possible. But the Nazis did not build cyclotrons and other necessary instruments in time. So they did not even try to produce plutonium. The only use they saw for their piles was as sources of power...
...plutonium pile has been used only for research, where it has been extremely useful: "The fast reactor gives a more intense source of fast neutrons than physicists heretofore have been able to obtain, except during the brief time of the test of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert...