Plutonium bomb

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The first test bomb fired on 16th July 1945 in the desert of New Mexico about 100 km north-west of Alamogordo and the Nagasaki bomb were plutonium bombs. Weapon plutonium is metallically pure Pu-239 which is obtained when the fuel elements remain only for a short time (days, some weeks) in the reactor and therefore achieve only very low burnup. For a burnup of 20,000 MWd/t and more, as occurs in commercial reactors, such high amounts of other plutonium isotopes are generated that the use for weapons is considerably restricted and technical difficulties increase. A bomb requires a minimum quantity of fissile material, which in the case of weapon plutonium in metallic form is about 10 kg. Even smaller quantities are possible utilizing the sophisticated weapon technology of nuclear weapon countries.

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