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

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

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

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 ...

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 ...

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators do not rely on chemical reactions like the batteries in your phone. Instead, they rely ...

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 ...

It covers the safety issues relating to: the handling of spent fuel; mechanical treatment and the dissolution of spent fuel in acid; the separation of uranium and plutonium from fission products using ...

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 ...

Most RTGs are built using plutonium-238 as their source of energy, which is not usable for nuclear power plants since it does not sustain fission reactions. Instead, plutonium-238 is an unstable ...