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by adrian_b
854 days ago
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That is the Pu238 isotope that is used in thermoelectric generators. Most of the plutonium produced in nuclear reactors is Pu239. This is the isotope that is useful as nuclear fuel and for nuclear bombs. As another poster has already written, it has a half-life of 24 thousand years, so there is no chance to get rid of it easily, unless it is recovered and used as fuel. There exists also the Pu244 isotope, with a half-life of 80 million years. This isotope is produced only in negligible amounts in nuclear reactors, but it is produced in supernova explosions, so the Solar System and the Earth had contained plutonium besides uranium and thorium in the beginning, during the first few hundred million years of their history, but the plutonium has decayed until now. |
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