Radioactivity – NuclearDeterrence.net

Quest for Plutonium

Edwin McMillian and Glenn Seaborg had discovered element 93, named neptunium, in 1940 at the University of California, Berkeley and Seaborg continued researching after McMillan was persuaded to leave to do research in radar technology. Seaborg and his collaborators found that neptunium underwent beta decay to form element 94 that, as mentioned previously, Seaborg named plutonium in February 1941. Research on the new element determined that plutonium 239 was fissile, and plutonium’s role in the quest for developing a weapon began. Seaborg began the task of determining how plutonium could be separated from the uranium at the University of Chicago, and the foundation began to be developed for the technology used in the giant chemical separation facilities that would eventually […]

Nuclear Scientist, RadioactivityBy E.Fermi

Lise Meitner

Meitner’s escape from Germany is an interesting story. Niels Bohr led the efforts to arrange for her to take a train to the Dutch border. She had received notice she was forbidden to leave Germany, and she did not have a current visa. One account mentions that a Nazi officer examined her expired visa while she was on the train. He returned the visa to her without comment and moved on. We will never know whether his lack of action after looking at the expired document was because of incompetence or compassion. I choose to believe the officer looked at the small, frightened woman and allowed her to escape to Holland and then to Stockholm, Sweden, where Bohr had found […]

Nuclear Scientist, RadioactivityBy E.Fermi

History of Nuclear Physics

Perhaps a good place to begin the history of nuclear physics would be with the famous story of an accidental discovery by Henri Becquerel in the late 1800s. He had experimented with a photographic plate sprinkled with a layer of uranium salt and exposed to the sun. He had seen the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance in black on the negative. “When he tried to repeat his experiment…Paris was (overcast) gray. He put the covered photographic plate away in a dark drawer, uranium salt in place.” He decided to develop the plate despite the fact it hadn’t been exposed to the sun as planned and found that “the silhouettes appeared with great intensity.” He had discovered energetic, penetrating radiation, which, […]

Plutonium, RadioactivityBy E.Fermi

Natural Plutonium

Let’s start at the beginning, which, in the case of Rocky Flats, is about 4.5 billion years ago. The Rocky Flats Plant was known mostly for its role in producing plutonium components for nuclear weapons. Those of us who worked there knew that the plant did much more than that; many thousands of people who worked at the plant never came close to any plutonium. However, plutonium is what comes to mind for most people when they think of Rocky Flats. Activists who devoted themselves to protesting the place learned that they created more support against the plant when they focused on plutonium, and they began to declare that “plutonium was designed to kill.” That’s a very catchy phrase, but […]