“Fat Man,” the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, carried about 6.2 kilograms of enriched plutonium, roughly the size of a softball. The origin of that deadly hunk of metal ...
Most places in the solar system can't be reached without nuclear energy. NASA uses plutonium-238 forged during the Cold War to power its most ambitious missions. NASA is running low on the material, ...