Ever wonder how a spacecraft millions or even billions of miles from the Sun can keep its lights on? After all, solar panels ...

Many scientists say “subcritical” experiments and computer simulations make nuclear weapons testing unnecessary.

July 16, 1945, marked a turning point in history with the first nuclear test, named Trinity, in the New Mexico desert in the ...

Uranium, plutonium and thorium can all be dissolved in appropriate ... In these liquid fuel designs, the fission products are dissolved into the molten salt, which is able to circulate through the ...

Several scientists, realizing that fission could be used to build a devastating ... In Hanford, Washington, three reactors were built to extract plutonium (another element with atoms that could ...

The radioactive "ashes" of the reactors that make plutonium are potentially a valuable source of radiant energy. A recent study summarizes the ways in which they could be put to work By Paul J ...

The reason was that weapons-grade uranium or plutonium was then (and is now) an essential ingredient for any nuclear bomb, whether a low-yield fission device or city-busting H-bomb. Doorstop’s ...

i.e., it achieved fission of 2% of the plutonium it contained. (Current rate of fission in the U.S. bombs is estimated at 10%.) Says one Western European nuclear physicist well acquainted with the ...

But the dangerous treasure—”fission products” from plutonium manufacture—may some day revolutionize many branches of industry. Last week Stanford Research Institute issued a weighty report ...

In 1952, the Atomic Energy Commission began operations at Rocky Flats as a federal atomic weapons facility, producing plutonium triggers for hydrogen bombs. (A hydrogen bomb or H-bomb uses fission in ...