Plutonium oxide is highly toxic to humans, especially via inhalation.

The dispute concerns two nuclear batteries, each containing 24.7 pounds of plutonium oxide to power Galileo's scientific instruments.

Or the converted plutonium oxide could be mixed with natural uranium oxide and used as reactor fuel.

MOX fuel containing thorium and plutonium oxides has also been studied.

Following startup testing, the facility would begin operations in 2016 with a disposition rate of up to 3.5 tons of plutonium oxide each year.

The green pellet can then be sintered into mixed uranium and plutonium oxide pellet.

The plutonium oxide fuel is in 18 GPHSs.

The lanthanum plutonium oxide was then collected and extracted with nitric acid to form plutonium nitrate.

Contamination by plutonium oxide has resulted from nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents, including military nuclear accidents where nuclear weapons have burned.

Further dilution of plutonium oxide during the MOX fuel manufacture brings gallium content to levels considered negligible.

Plutonium is not absorbed into the body efficiently when ingested; only 0.04% of plutonium oxide is absorbed after ingestion.

They are composed mostly of iron oxides, with smaller proportion of aluminium oxide, and uranium and plutonium oxides.

In the U.S., some plutonium extracted from dismantled nuclear weapons is melted to form glass logs of plutonium oxide that weigh two tonnes.

Physicist Peter Zimmerman, following up a suggestion by Ted Taylor, demonstrated that a low-yield (1-kiloton) nuclear weapon could be made relatively easily from plutonium oxide.

Since 1995, the MELOX factory has been producing MOX from a mix of uranium and plutonium oxides.

The reactor can use 5% enriched uranium oxide fuel, reprocessed uranium fuel and 100% mixed uranium plutonium oxide fuel.

The EPR design can use 5% enriched uranium oxide fuel, optionally with up to 50% mixed uranium plutonium oxide fuel.

She worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, where she developed techniques to extract plutonium chloride from a mixture containing plutonium oxide.

The 3 percent or so of the fuel that cannot be turned back into usable plutonium oxide or uranium oxide is melted into a glass substance for long-term storage.

There are no obvious technical obstacles to using plutonium oxide as reactor fuel since the processes for manufacturing plutonium-based fuel and using it to generate electricity are well understood.

Scientists have known that nanometer-size clusters of plutonium oxide are responsible for plutonium contamination spreading further in groundwater than expected, increasing the risk of sickness in humans and animals.

It also reacts readily with oxygen, forming PuO and PuO as well as intermediate oxides; plutonium oxide fills 40% more volume than plutonium metal.

The Soviet Union constructed a series of fast reactors, the first being mercury-cooled and fueled with plutonium metal, and the later plants sodium-cooled and fueled with plutonium oxide.

The metallic plutonium used in warheads could be converted to plutonium oxide, then blended with lethal spent fuel from nuclear reactors and turned into the glass-like material, in a process called vitrification.

In the 1957 fire an explosion occurred in the ventilation system whose filters had initially trapped a good deal of escaping plutonium oxide before they were in turn destroyed, releasing Pu-239 to the atmosphere.