Powering spacecraft with solar energy may not seem like a challenge, given how intense the sun's light can feel on Earth.

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

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 ...

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

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 ...

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are nuclear fission reactors in which either the fuel and/or the coolant is a molten salt. Molten salt is salt which liquifies at elevated temperatures and can store ...

One of the primary forms of waste from a typical nuclear light water reactor (LWR) is the spent fuel from the fission reaction. These consist of roughly 3% waste isotopes, 1% plutonium isotopes ...

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 ...