In the form of an organometallic complex – with their high symmetries and multiple covalent bonds with carbon – it's also ...

Nuclear fission reactors struggle with two key problems: poor fuel utilization and complicated radioactive waste handling. To ...

For example, each atom of the Pu-238 isotope contains 144 neutrons ... Next, the nuclear reaction products were chemically separated by means of the plutonium-uranium extraction (PUREX) process. First ...

was bee-busy making plutonium and its byproducts ... Could we go to war with a single atom bomb?” Even so, Dr. Mackenzie’s revelation meant that the U.S. was no longer the only nation in ...

After helping to engineer the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki ... a maximum size beyond which an atom won’t be stable even fleetingly, as a sort of chemical mayfly.

As each uranium atom breaks apart, it shoots out neutrons ... in a rare form of uranium (U-235)—or converted into plutonium (Pu-239). Heavy water can play a role in breeding weapons-grade ...

From there, Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch proved that the uranium atom had been split ... three reactors were built to extract plutonium (another element with atoms that could be split ...