The Hazard from Plutonium Dispersal by Nuclear-warhead Accidents
View/
Date
1990Citation
Steve Fetter and Frank von Hippel, "The Hazard from Plutonium Dispersal by Nuclear-warhead Accidents," Science and Global Security, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1990), pp. 21–41
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Nuclear weapons are carefully designed to have an extremely low probability of
exploding accidentally with an appreciable yield—even if they are involved in a
high-speed crash, struck by a bullet or consumed in a fire. The principal concern
when nuclear warheads are involved in such accidents is the possible dispersal of
plutonium into the environment. In particular, an explosion could disperse a
significant fraction of the plutonium in a warhead as particles of respirable size.