Word: tritium
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...mystery was great enough to disturb even the most jaded cold warrior. Somewhere between Oak Ridge, Tenn., and two manufacturers in England, a total of five grams (0.175 oz.) of radioactive tritium had vanished without a trace. What made the disappearance especially alarming was that the quantity of tritium involved was sufficient, when combined with other ingredients, to build a small nuclear weapon. The U.S. Department of Energy, sensitive to the dangers of nuclear proliferation, last July halted U.S. sales of the gas and moved quickly to explain the losses and assure the public that the missing tritium...
...little too quickly, it seems. According to a report by the Energy Department's inspector general made public last week, the DOE not only failed to locate the missing tritium but never adequately addressed the possibility that the gas was stolen. In a sharply worded statement that raises questions about what exactly the Government has been doing for the past five months, the inspector general said that earlier explanations attributing the losses to procedural errors or mismeasurements were based more on "speculation than fact." More than a year after the first shortfalls occurred, the report charges, "basic questions concerning...
...University of Washington, two graduate students reported finding tritium, another fusion waste product, in their version of the experiment. A scientist in Moscow asserted that he too had found evidence of cold fusion. And M.I.T. filed for patents based on a researcher's theoretical model of how fusion in a jar might work...
...primary purpose of the $3.6 billion nuclear plant that the U.S. Department of Energy wants to build in Idaho Falls, Idaho, is to help replenish America's dwindling supply of tritium, a vital component in atom bombs. But if approved by Congress, the Idaho facility could play an even more important role in the civilian use of nuclear power. For it is based on what proponents claim is a fail-safe technology, one that virtually eliminates the danger of a meltdown...
...inflated the Savannah River troubles so that Westinghouse Electric, which is scheduled to take over the plant's operation from Du Pont on April 1, will look better. Heckert also contends that DOE is promoting the furor to gain public support and congressional funding for a new tritium-producing reactor at the huge installation. It would cost at least $6 billion and take more than six years to build. "Despite all the hullabaloo," Heckert says of his company's operation of the plant, "nobody was ever injured or killed...