Lasers, heat and a notoriously tricky element are at the center of a quiet revolution in how the United States plans to power ...

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are breathing new life into the scientific ...

The environment and human health are adversely affected by plutonium, even in minute quantities. The isotope plutonium-244 provides clues about nucleosynthesis and neutron star mergers, so plutonium ...

A team of scientists has discovered a new, stable form of plutonium – and done so by accident. The famously unstable element is tricky to transport, store and dispose of, but the find could lead to ...

Oxidation is the process where atoms lose electrons during a chemical reaction. Among the radioactive elements, neptunium and plutonium are much harder to oxidize than uranium. To study these elements ...

In the early decades of the atomic age, using the enormous energy in plutonium atoms for the peaceful generation of electricity became a multibillion-dollar quest that shaped US energy research and ...

For decades, humanity has sent robotic explorers far beyond Earth’s comfort zone—into places where sunlight is weak, nights ...

Traces of rare forms of iron and plutonium have been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, after some kind of cataclysm in outer space created this radioactive stuff and sent it raining down on ...

Elements that do not exist in nature—that have been created in a laboratory—are unstable. After hours or days of one element bombarding another with enough energy for both to fuse, the resulting new ...

“Uranium 235 and plutonium can be denatured; such denatured materials do not readily lend themselves to the making of atomic explosives, but. . . can be used for the peaceful applications of atomic ...