Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Plutonium(IV) oxide, or plutonia, is a chemical compound with the formula Pu O 2. This high melting-point solid is a principal compound of plutonium . It can vary in color from yellow to olive green, depending on the particle size, temperature and method of production.
Plutonium shows enormous, and reversible, reaction rates with pure hydrogen, forming plutonium hydride. [12] It also reacts readily with oxygen, forming PuO and PuO 2 as well as intermediate oxides; plutonium oxide fills 40% more volume than plutonium metal.
Plutonium oxide is substantially more toxic than uranium oxide, making fuel manufacture more difficult and expensive. As plutonium isotopes absorb more neutrons than uranium fuels, reactor control systems may need modification. MOX fuel tends to run hotter because of lower thermal conductivity, which may be an issue in some reactor designs.
The usual transport of plutonium is through the more stable plutonium oxide in a sealed package. A typical transport consists of one truck carrying one protected shipping container, holding a number of packages with a total weight varying from 80 to 200 kg of plutonium oxide.
238 Pu has become the most widely used fuel for RTGs, in the form of plutonium(IV) oxide (PuO 2). [37] However, plutonium(IV) oxide containing a natural abundance of oxygen emits neutrons at the rate of roughly 2.3 × 10 3 n/sec/g of plutonium-238. This emission rate is relatively high compared to the neutron emission rate of plutonium-238 metal.
Mixed oxide, or MOX fuel, is a blend of plutonium and natural or depleted uranium which behaves similarly (though not identically) to the enriched uranium feed for which most nuclear reactors were designed.
Watchdogs are raising new concerns about legacy contamination in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and home to a renewed effort to manufacture key components for nuclear weapons. A ...
Unlike the other five reactor units, reactor 3 ran on mixed core, containing both uranium fuel and mixed uranium and plutonium oxide, or MOX fuel (with the core being approximately 6% MOX fuel [5]), during a loss of cooling accident in a subcritical reactor MOX fuel will not behave differently from UOX fuel. The key difference between plutonium ...