Word: uranium
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Among the consequences of this law is that if the nucleus of a uranium atom fissions (splits) into two nuclei with slightly less total mass, a tremendous amount of energy is released. In 1939, with World War II looming, a group of scientists who realized the implications of this persuaded Einstein to overcome his pacifist scruples and write a letter to President Roosevelt urging the U.S. to start a program of nuclear research. This led to the Manhattan Project and the atom bomb that exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. Some people blame the atom bomb on Einstein because he discovered...
...Deal, the country had never associated the contemplative life with governmental action. Now there was a Brain Trust; being an "egghead" was useful, admirable, even sexy. One saw that it was possible to outthink the enemy. Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt urging the making of a uranium bomb, and soon a coterie of can-do intellectuals convened at Los Alamos to become the new cowboys of war machinery. Presidents have relied on eggheads ever since: Einstein begat Kissinger begat Rubin, Reich and Greenspan...
Regardless of its scope, an accident that can be classified as nuclear--like the one at the JCO uranium-processing plant at Tokaimura, not far from Tokyo [WORLD, Oct. 11]--seems to get wide media coverage. This event, though certainly serious, was on par with other industrial accidents that occur with some frequency and generally get only local attention. Unfortunately, workers are regularly killed and injured in chemical plants, refineries and manufacturing facilities, occasionally with some release of a hazardous chemical...
...Pounds of uranium believed to have been added to a tank of nitric acid--seven times the safety limit--causing a nuclear accident in Japan...
...factory, built in 1982, is part of the fuel supply line for an experimental fast-breeder nuclear power plant. It is where fissionable U-235 is combined with nitric acid to produce uranium dioxide, which is then combined at another plant with plutonium to produce the enriched uranium pellets used as breeder fuel. According to JCO, workers inexplicably mixed far more than the normal amount of uranium--35.2 lbs. instead of 5.2 lbs.--with the acid. Then they used stainless-steel buckets rather than pipes--again, inexplicably--to pour the liquefied uranium into the tank. The high concentration of uranium...