Seaborg's plutonium? A case study in nuclear forensics
Abstract
Passive X-ray and gamma-ray analysis was performed on a curious sample from UC Berkeley's Hazardous Material Facility inventory, and the object was found to contain 239Pu. No other radioactive isotopes were observed. The mass of 239Pu contained in this object was determined to be 2.0 ± 0.3 μg. These observations are consistent with the identification of this object as containing the 2.77-μg PuO2 (2.44 μg 239Pu) sample produced in 1942 and described by Seaborg and his collaborators as the first sample of 239Pu that was large enough to be weighed.
- Publication:
-
American Journal of Physics
- Pub Date:
- October 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1119/1.4926957
- Bibcode:
- 2015AmJPh..83..843N