What is plutonium and where is it found?
Plutonium is a man-made radioactive element that can be used in nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. It is extremely heavy, with 94 protons in its nucleus. Plutonium is produced when an atom of U-238 absorbs a neutron, typically in a nuclear reactor. All current nuclear power reactors produce plutonium in their spent fuel, though this plutonium cannot be used in nuclear weapons until it has been chemically separated from the uranium and the intensely radioactive fission products in the spent fuel, a step known as reprocessing. As with uranium enrichment, it is extremely unlikely that terrorists could build and operate their own nuclear reactor and reprocessing facility to produce plutonium for a bomb. Plutonium-239, the most common isotope and the one most useful in nuclear weapons, has a half-life of 24,000 years (meaning that half of it will have decayed after that time, half of the remainder after another 24,000 years, and so on). Over geologic time, therefore, plutonium has decayed awa
