Re: On 8/1945 A-Bombs

Jim Powers <72327.1214@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

....

> The other fissionable isotope, Pu-239, can be produced by
> bombarding U-238 with neutrons from a cyclotron or other particle
> accelerator (in fact this is how it was discovered by Glenn Seaborg in
> 1940) but for quantites sufficient
> for a weapon you need a reactor to generate the required quantity of
> neutrons. And for that you need U-235, either in natural uranium with
> a heavy water or graphite moderator, or partially enriched uranium with
> ordinary "light" water.

Which raises the question...supposedly Plutonium was unknown
before Seaborg's experiment. (And its existence was security-
classified by the US government!)
But if there were natural reactors in uranium deposits, didn't
those reactors generate plutonium just as the man-made reactors did?
Why wasn't plutonium noticed in uranium extracted from those
deposits?
(Did Fermi's first Chicago reactor generate plutonium?)
--

.

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