This pure plutonium is needed to avoid premature ignition of low-mass nuclear weapon designs by neutrons produced by spontaneous fission of plutonium-240.
"This stuff is pure plutonium," Allen whispered to himself as he watched the screen.
At room temperature, pure plutonium is silvery in color but gains a tarnish when oxidized.
Unlike PUREX reprocessing, the IFR's electrolytic reprocessing, at least of spent fuel itself, need not separate out pure plutonium.
The most common reprocessing technique, PUREX, presents a particular concern, since it is designed to separate pure plutonium.
The presence of gallium also significantly lowers the susceptibility of plutonium to corrosion, to 4% of the corrosion rate of pure plutonium.
As only the ε-δ transition occurs during cooling, casting Pu-Ga is much less problematic than casting pure plutonium.
We can achieve this by, inter alia, excluding usage of enriched uranium and pure plutonium in the world atomic energy production.
Our best guess is that the core rods oxydized, only instead of creating ferrous oxide, or rust, the way steel rods do, these rods rusted pure plutonium.
Secondly, can the Commissioner give me an answer as to the possible specific risks of the transport of mixed uranium-plutonium fuel, the rules for which are different from those for pure plutonium?