Opinions differ on whether the half ton of weapons-grade plutonium secretly shipped by the U.S. government to the Nevada National Security Site could impact residents’ health and the environment.

Washington’s gamble on metallic fast reactors could turn bomb metal into centuries of power. In October 2025, the US Department of Energy launched an unprecedented offer: 19.7 tons of surplus ...

Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. When the United States broke off cease-fire talks with Russia over ...

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), whose tenth review conference is coming up in August, is in trouble, and not only because of the crescendo of complaints about the failure of the ...

Public health advocates say the US Navy knew for almost a year that tests had detected dangerous levels of plutonium in the ...

Plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs. But it can also be recycled and used as a fuel in nuclear reactors. According to the authors of a Nature editorial, the UK—which has the largest civilian ...

A map of the areas sampled by analytical chemist Michael Ketterer who released his findings of legacy plutonium waste in Los Alamos' Acid Canyon. (Courtesy of Michael Ketterer) Los Alamos, the Atomic ...

Shocking detection of plutonium-239 at Hunters Point sparks outrage over Navy's 11-month delay. Explore health risks, ...

I recall a Poul Anderson science fiction novel with teleportation being one of its’ premises and one of the plot points was the main station was on the Moon because you could teleport millions of tons ...

With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, going almost totally unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances—and ...

How plutonium was depicted in the movie “Back to the Future” was a joke. The fictional Doc Brown barely took precautions while using plutonium stolen from Libyan terrorists to energize a DeLorean time ...