Plutonium segregation in glassy aerodynamic fallout from a nuclear weapon test
Author(s) -
Kiel Holliday,
J. M. Dierken,
M. L. Monroe,
Marc Fitzgerald,
Naomi Marks,
Richard C. Gostic,
Kim B. Knight,
Ken Czerwinski,
I. D. Hutcheon,
John W. McClory
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
dalton transactions
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.98
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1477-9234
pISSN - 1477-9226
DOI - 10.1039/c6dt04184a
Subject(s) - plutonium , nuclear test , nuclear weapon , radioactive fallout , nuclear engineering , test (biology) , aerodynamics , environmental science , materials science , radiochemistry , aerospace engineering , chemistry , nuclear physics , engineering , physics , geology , paleontology
This study combines electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy to probe major element composition and autoradiography to map plutonium in order to examine the spatial relationships between plutonium and fallout composition in aerodynamic glassy fallout from a nuclear weapon test. A sample set of 48 individual fallout specimens were interrogated to reveal that the significant chemical heterogeneity of this sample set could be described compositionally with a relatively small number of compositional endmembers. Furthermore, high concentrations of plutonium were never associated with several endmember compositions and concentrated with the so-called mafic glass endmember. This result suggests that it is the physical characteristics of the compositional endmembers and not the chemical characteristics of the individual component elements that govern the un-burnt plutonium distribution with respect to major element composition in fallout.
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