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Radiological Safety Training for Plutonium Facilities
DOEHDBK11452001
Student's Guide
I. History of plutonium
A. Discovery
In the earlier part of this century (1900-1940),
physicists speculated that there might be elements
with higher atomic numbers than uranium (at the time,
the element with the highest known atomic number).
The first of these elements was found in 1940 at
the University of California (Berkeley) by Edwin M.
McMillan and Philip H. Abelson. The element was
called neptunium after the planet Neptune. A few
months later, Arthur C. Wahl, Glenn T. Seaborg, and
Joseph W. Kennedy produced plutonium by
bombarding uranium-238 (U-238) with deuterons in an
accelerator called a cyclotron (also called an "atom
smasher"). The cyclotron is a large machine that uses
electromagnets to accelerate charged atomic particles
(protons and beta particles) to extremely high speeds
and then smash them into a target material.
B. Early research
On March 28, 1941, scientists at the University of
California (Berkeley) demonstrated that plutonium-239
(Pu-239) could undergo fission with thermal/slow
neutrons. Fission is the process of splitting atoms
through which large amounts of energy (200 Mev per
fission as compared to 4 ev released during
combustion of an atom of carbon) are released, as
well as excess neutrons (between two and three),
which can then split other atoms to keep a chain
reaction going.
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