Earliest known sample of plutonium found
MAR 02, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023108
BBC NEWS : A bottle discarded at one of the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state contains the oldest sample of bomb-grade plutonium ever made in a nuclear reactor.
The sample dates to 1944 and is a relic from the infancy of the US nuclear weapons programme.
A team from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used nuclear forensic techniques to date the sample and track down its origins.
Details appear in the latest edition of the journal Analytical Chemistry.
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
