Enriched uranium

Humanity is in a race against time as the threat of global warming looms on the horizon. To prevent catastrophe, the nations of the world must focus on decreasing their carbon dioxide output by as much as possible. While agriculture and industrial processes have a high carbon footprint, fossil fuels are by far the biggest contributor to anthropogenic global warming. Therefore, the best way to mitigate the problem is to replace coal and oil with cleaner sources of energy. Solar and wind power are…

the Soviet Union’s industry as a whole, especially the nuclear industry. Eventually, the dissent generated from the Chernobyl incident and the discovery of its lack of safety lead to the shutdown of all RBMK’s in the Soviet Union outside of Russia. Ultimately, the Chernobyl incident was the beginning of the international fear of “using bombs to generate electricity.” On the day of the second anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Russian scientist Valery Legasov committed suicide. Upon his…

1. Based on the past and present policies in Iran, I do see that, to some extent, there is merit to Iran’s Anti-American sentiment. After the US helped to overthrow Mowzadek in Iran, they backed the Shah, a king-like figure in charge of Iran. In the eyes of the US, the Shah was a positive input on the Iranians lives, but to the Iranian natives, they greatly disliked the Shah. He was very westernized and Tehran even began to transform into a Las Vegas like city. He also conformed to whatever the…

Soviets. It was an RBMK-1000 model nuclear reactor, which used “enriched U-235 uranium fuel to heat water creating steam that drives the reactors’ turbines and generate electricity” (http://www.livescience.com/39961-chernobyl.html). The plant had 4 reactors with graphite moderators, which slows down the release of neutron during fission. Essentially, used to maintain the chain reaction. The reactors were powered by enriched uranium oxide pellets enclosed in a fuel rod. As for the coolant,…

alliance turned to developing merchant vessels and determined that diminishing refueling time led to cost-effective trade. However, the nuclear propulsion systems on these ships had to be small to fit the ship, which required highly enriched uranium. In the wrong hands, this uranium could have been used to create atomic weapons of mass destruction. Because of this, the Brussels Convention on the Liability of Operators of Nuclear Ships stressed that nuclear power should be limited to large…

Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident on March 11th 2011 that would reintroduce to the world the question of “Should the use of nuclear energy continue?” Fukushima and many other critical junctures since the start of the first nuclear reactor in Idaho, in December 1951, have influenced changing attitudes towards nuclear energy throughout time. Nuclear power is one of the primary…

“Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.” -President Reagan. Sometimes the best way to make a point is by using the words of someone else. President Obama was well aware of this in his speech about the new Iran nuclear deal. The reason for Obama giving this speech was simple; he wanted to define the new Iran nuclear deal and convince the people that congress should vote affirmative. President Obama structured his speech much like that of…

On August 6th and 9th, 1945, about 80,000 Japanese civilians and soldiers were brutally killed in an instant by two American-made atomic bombs. Years of horrendous fallout would then follow in the wake of two of the worst man-made disasters of all time. This was the work of the many people who contributed to the Manhattan Project, which Julius Oppenheimer was chiefly involved. As the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, Julius was instrumental in the development of the world’s…

U.S. Air Force had scorched Japan for roughly a year with during World War II, this bomb was not filled with the standard incendiaries. Instead, this 9700 pound bomb resembling an obese metal baseball bat was packed with two masses of highly enriched uranium-235. The bomb, innocently named “Little Boy” arrived at its destination…

Dangers of Nuclear Proliferation Throughout the twentieth century, countries have developed nuclear weapons technology, one of the most lethal technologies ever created. The first country to develop this technology was The United States, and it was used for the first time at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in World War II. The devastation caused by the two nuclear bombs was so catastrophic that it led to an immediate end of the six year war. Since then, the technology has proliferated to…