Word: plutonium
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...consuming dry grass, then Ponderosa pines, then, engorged to 32,000-plus acres, gobbling up hundreds of homes and singeing buildings at Los Alamos, birthplace of the atom bomb. The fires never came close to a building that holds drums of transuranic mixed waste and a metric ton of plutonium. No disastrous explosions occurred, but the air will be monitored for radioactivity. Meanwhile, noxious fumes wafted from the lead paint, rubber and plastics in burning cars and buildings. Some 20,000 people were evacuated from Los Alamos and surrounding towns. The damage estimates at week's end ranged from hundreds...
...like nuclear energy, amounted to a Faustian bargain between civilization and the natural world--which, as it happens, supports civilization. Hydroelectricity from Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State smelted enough aluminum during World War II to build tens of thousands of warplanes, with enough surplus power to make plutonium for the first atom bombs. But now, in the form of devastated salmon fisheries, Grand Coulee (along with countless other dams) is extracting an awful price for its creation...
...report's author, Matthew G. Bunn, the Kennedy School's assistant director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, said surplus stores of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) have posing an increased threat to U.S. security. Both plutonium and HEU can be used to make nuclear bombs...
According to a Boston Globe article published Saturday, Russia is believed to have a stockpile of 160 tons of plutonium and more than 1,000 tons of HEU located in 40 sites...
Bunn said Russia's depressed economy, combined with theft and corruption, results in serious risks that plutonium or HEU could fall into "the wrong hands...