Plutonium (Pu) exhibits one of the most diverse and complex chemistries of any element in the periodic table. Since its discovery in 1940, scientists have synthesized and studied many different types ...

Plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs. But it can also be recycled and used as a fuel in nuclear reactors. According to the authors of a Nature editorial, the UK—which has the largest civilian ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Plutonium-238 is the fuel that is driving the Mars rover Curiosity ...

A collaborative effort from researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Sandia National ...

Our researchers have shared the latest strategies for plutonium immobilisation with visitors from the Japanese Citizens' Nuclear Information Center (CNIC). During their visit to Sheffield on 13 ...

For historical reasons, plutonium brings to mind nuclear weapons. Jan Hartmann brings another side of element 94 to attention, which features an upcoming trip to its eponymous celestial body.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), whose tenth review conference is coming up in August, is in trouble, and not only because of the crescendo of complaints about the failure of the ...

In 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft left Earth on a five-year mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Thirty-six years later, the car-size probe is still exploring, still sending its findings home. It ...

With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, going almost totally unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances—and ...

When NASA's next Mars rover blasts off later this month, the car-sized robot will carry with it nearly eight pounds of a special kind of plutonium fuel that's in short supply. NASA has relied on that ...

The clean-up of a decommissioned US nuclear weapons plant has unearthed one of the oldest known samples of man-made plutonium. Workers found roughly half a gram of weapons-grade plutonium-239 (Pu-239) ...