The yellow powder might be plutonium [25Sep11] - 0 views
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About the previous post http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/09/news-japan-after-the-typhoon/ I received a message from a reader of this blog. It was to suggest the yellow powder could be plutonium. Here is the explanation. http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/ms2002705/ms2002705.html source for text below
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Plutonium-239 is one of the two fissile materials used for the production of nuclear weapons and in some nuclear reactors as a source of energy. The other fissile material is uranium-235. Plutonium-239 is virtually nonexistent in nature. It is made by bombarding uranium-238 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Uranium-238 is present in quantity in most reactor fuel; hence plutonium-239 is continuously made in these reactors. Since plutonium-239 can itself be split by neutrons to release energy, plutonium-239 provides a portion of the energy generation in a nuclear reactor. The physical properties of plutonium metal are summarized in Table 1.
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Only two plutonium isotopes have commercial and military applications. Plutonium-238, which is made in nuclear reactors from neptunium-237, is used to make compact thermoelectric generators; plutonium-239 is used for nuclear weapons and for energy; plutonium-241, although fissile, (see next paragraph) is impractical both as a nuclear fuel and a material for nuclear warheads. Some of the reasons are far higher cost , shorter half-life, and higher radioactivity than plutonium-239. Isotopes of plutonium with mass numbers 240 through 242 are made along with plutonium-239 in nuclear reactors, but they are contaminants with no commercial applications. In this fact sheet we focus on civilian and military plutonium (which are interchangeable in practice–see Table 5), which consist mainly of plutonium-239 mixed with varying amounts of other isotopes, notably plutonium-240, -241, and -242.
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