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Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 is also used for that purpose. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in thermal spectrum nuclear reactors, along with uranium-235 and uranium-233. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years. [1]
Plutonium-238 is not fissile but can undergo nuclear fission easily with fast neutrons as well as alpha decay. [12] All plutonium isotopes can be "bred" into fissile material with one or more neutron absorptions, whether followed by beta decay or not. This makes non-fissile isotopes of plutonium a fertile material.
Plutonium-241 is a beta emitter with a half-life of 14.3 years, corresponding to a decay of about 5% of 241 Pu nuclei over a one-year period. This decay has a Q-value of 20.78 ± 0.17 keV and a mean of 5.227 ± 0.043 keV, and does not emit gamma rays. [1]
Plutonium is graded by proportion of 240 Pu: weapons grade (<7%), fuel grade (7–19%) and reactor grade (>19%). Lower grades are less suited for bombs and thermal reactors but can fuel fast reactors. Plutonium-241 is fissile, but beta decays with a half-life of 14 years to americium-241.
A significant amount of zirconium is formed by the fission process; some of this consists of short-lived radionuclides (95 Zr and 97 Zr which decay to molybdenum), while almost 10% of the fission products mixture after years of decay consists of five stable or nearly stable isotopes of zirconium plus 93 Zr with a halflife of 1.53 million years ...
Plutonium-238 was the first isotope of plutonium to be discovered. It was synthesized by Glenn Seaborg and associates in December 1940 by bombarding uranium-238 with deuterons, creating neptunium-238. 238 92 U + 2 1 H → 238 93 Np + 2 n. The neptunium isotope then undergoes β − decay to plutonium-238, with a half-life of 2.12 days: [6] 238 ...
Decay chain of 240 Pu. Plutonium-240 (240 Pu or Pu-240) is an isotope of plutonium formed when plutonium-239 captures a neutron.The detection of its spontaneous fission led to its discovery in 1944 at Los Alamos and had important consequences for the Manhattan Project.
Decay heat as fraction of full power for a reactor SCRAMed from full power at time 0, using two different correlations. In a typical nuclear fission reaction, 187 MeV of energy are released instantaneously in the form of kinetic energy from the fission products, kinetic energy from the fission neutrons, instantaneous gamma rays, or gamma rays from the capture of neutrons. [7]