Word: plutonium
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Cyclotrons were not all. Sweden was obviously planning to build a uranium-plutonium pile, for Parliament had been asked to appropriate $1 million for high-purity graphite, heavy water and other pile materials. No uranium had been mined as yet, but fairly large deposits had been found in central Sweden. They were low grade, containing less than half a pound of uranium per ton of ore. Swedish uranium would be expensive, but cost might be no barrier if richer deposits in luckier countries were kept away from the open market...
Chemists of the Manhattan Project were having mythology trouble. They had created two new elements, Nos. 95 and 96 (TIME, Nov. 26). But when they tried to name them, they were stumped. Uranium (No. 92), neptunium (No. 93), plutonium (No. 94) had been named after the last three outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto...
Seaborg Tells. Until recently, atomic doodlers had little real information. But last week, Glenn T. Seaborg, codiscoverer of plutonium, and leading chemist of the Manhattan Project, released a gob of it. Said Seaborg: "It is not at all out of the question that the greatest gains to humanity from the atomic energy development will result from the widespread use of tracers...
...problem was how to denature plutonium, produced by elaborate equipment from the mixture of U-235 and U-238. Competent physicists guessed that the only substance which could denature plutonium effectively would be a nonexplosive isotope of plutonium itself. A different chemical element would not do, for it could be separated by a comparatively simple chemical process...
Until last week, the world had heard no hint of nonexplosive plutonium. But behind the Manhattan Project's secrecy curtain, it might have been created as early as 1943. Some physicists mentioned plutonium 240, which they thought might be made from the explosive plutonium (Pu-239), or from natural uranium. If it proved inert, like U-238, it could be mixed with Pu-239 to make it non-detonating. There is reason to think that both varieties of plutonium may be produced simultaneously, and ready-mixed...