Word: tritium
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...controlled fusion can occur only under conditions of very high temperature and density that researchers have tried for years to produce by using powerful magnetic fields to squeeze or confine isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. But even the best of these "magnetic bottles" -which require tremendous amounts of energy to operate-have so far been unable to provide the necessary temperature and density for more than a tiny fraction of a second...
Lately scientists have been turning to a more efficient tool for creating fusion: the laser. By heating a tiny pellet of deuterium or tritium with a powerful pulse of laser light, they cause the explosive evaporation of the pellet's surface. As the material sprays off, the rest of the pellet implodes. The hydrogen nuclei are thus forced together. As early as 1968, a team of Soviet researchers under Physicist Nikolai Basov, a Nobel laureate, reported that they had used lasers to ignite a brief but clearly detectable fusion reaction. Since then, their experiments have been repeated-and improved...
...total of $11 million but yielded gas that would be worth only $1.5 million-if it were uncontaminated and of high quality. Unfortunately, the gas released by Rulison is chemically inferior to gas from conventional wells in the same field and contains excessive amounts of radioactive byproducts like tritium. The cheapest way to correct those faults, the AEC says, would be to mix one unit of the contaminated Rulison gas with up to 50 units of high-quality nonradioactive gas. But to do so would require an abundance of uncontaminated natural gas, which is what the nuclear program was supposed...
...weapons for the nation's defense. While radioactive debris has escaped from 68 of 253 underground nuclear tests held in Nevada, AEC officials contend that no leaks have been recorded for tests of more than 200 kilotons. On the other hand, they admit that water contaminated with radioactive tritium could seep through open rock to the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean any time within three to 1,000 years. Such uncertainty hardly reassured the concerned environmentalists...
...three researchers confirmed the fact that viral RNA material was indeed producing its own DNA. They labelled four chemical building blocks of DNA with a radioactive isotope of hydrogen called tritium. After mixing the building blocks with viral RNA, the "tracer" element appeared in what was chemically identified as DNA. Thus it was apparent that the RNA had assembled the blocks to form DNA in its own image...