Scientists have been building nuclear weapons for more than 80 years, but crafting this technology remains a challenge.

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

Since the first nuclear explosion in history during the Trinity test in 1945, nuclear weapons have significantly shaped 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 ...

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 ...

During fission, a fast-moving neutron splits an ... (If the chain reaction started with uranium, it also created a byproduct, plutonium, a better fuel for a nuclear weapon.) At the University ...

A wildlife corridor plans to connect two Superfund sites at the former Rocky Flats plutonium plant and the Rocky Mountain ...

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 ...

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 ...