Seaborg submitted a paper on their discovery to the journal Physical Review in March 1941, but the paper was removed when it was discovered that an isotope of plutonium, Pu-239, may be used to ...

have become the number one concern of workers at the plant. Plutonium-239, the isotope found in the spent MOX fuel, is much more radioactive than the depleted Uranium-238 in the fuel. Plutonium ...

A Massachusetts man accused of selling plutonium ... through which he marketed and sold radioactive materials, including Plutonium-239 allegedly derived from Cold War-era Soviet smoke detectors ...

Its chemical symbol is Pu and its atomic number is 94 ... There are 16 isotopes of plutonium, having mass numbers ranging from 232 to 247. Plutonium-239 is the isotope used in nuclear weapons ...

Left to its own devices, plutonium decays slowly. The real danger comes when humans interfere. Related: What is the Standard Model? An isotope of plutonium named plutonium-239 is fissile ...

Plutonium-239 is the last nucleus with such a quantum spin left to analyse – partly because plutonium has a number of complex magnetic properties that interfere with the measurements.

The half-life of plutonium-239 is 24,000 years, so if it escaped in smoke from a burning reactor and contaminated soil downwind, it would remain hazardous for tens of thousands of years.

Like U-235, the only naturally fissile isotope, Pu-239 and Pu-241 can be readily split to release about 1-2 million times as much energy as burning similar mass of petroleum. Plutonium's real ...