Word: tritium
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...revelations were enough to curl the hair on the neck of the most seasoned nuclear engineer. Last April a reactor at the Federal Government's sprawling Savannah River Plant near Aiken, S.C., was shut down to upgrade safety systems -- with partially irradiated tritium still in its core. In August technicians, oblivious to the decaying radioactive material inside, tried to restart the reactor but were unable to keep it going. The next day they tried again. Ignoring procedure, they set off an abnormal jump in nuclear fission, usually a sign of imminent trouble. Workers ignored the warning, forcing plant officials...
...tubes terminate inside an airless 16-ft.-wide aluminum chamber, each entering it from a different direction. Inside, the focusing lenses are arrayed around a pellet of deuterium and tritium, two heavier varieties of hydrogen atoms. Scientists hope that when the beams simultaneously hit the pellet, which is smaller than a grain of sand, the temperature of the pellet's outer surface will be raised to 100 million degrees, causing it to vaporize explosively. Just as a rocket is pushed forward by its tail exhaust, the vaporizing surface would exert a force inward, compressing the pellet to a density...
Hardvard also produces some longer term waste such as carbon-14 and tritium, which have half-lives will over 1000 years. These elements are not very dangerous and will probably be placed in a class by themselves" under future regulation, Shapiro said...
...Pont operates Savannah River, near Aiken, S.C., on a non-profit basis for the government. Built by the chemicals giant in 1950 at the behest of the DOE's ancestor, the Atomic Energy Commission, the plant produces plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons production. Harvard owns almost $5 million of Du Pont stock...
...Pont operates Savannah River, near Aiken, S C., on a non-profit basis for the government. Built by the chemicals giant in 1950 at the behest of the DOE's ancestor, the Atomic Energy Commission, the plant produces plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons production. Harvard owns almost $5 million of Du Pont stock...