Plutonium, Our Country's Only Feasible Solution Should we begin to manufacture one of the most destructive and infamous substances on the face on the Earth once again? The engineers say yes, but The United States stopped making this element with theban on manufacturing nuclear weapons. But with the continuing problem withour ever diminishing energy sources, some want us to begin using morenuclear energy and less energy from natural resources. This paper is goingto discuss what plutonium is, the advantages and disadvantages of its use,and why we should think about restarting our production of this usefulelement.After the United States dropped "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" on Japan endingWorld War II, the public has had some type of understanding about thepower of plutonium and its devastating properties, but that is all anyoneheard. After WWII, Americans started to think about what the atomic bomb could doto the U.S. and its people. When anyone mentioned plutonium or the word"nuclear" the idea of Hiroshima or Nagasaki being destroyed was the firstthing people thought about. No one could even ponder the idea that itcould be used for other more constructive things like sources of energy orto kept a person's heart beating. Then we started to build more reactorsand produce more of the substance but mostly for our nuclear weaponsprograms.Along with reactors, sometimes comes a meltdown which can produce harmfuleffects if it isn't controlled quickly enough. After such instances as theHanford, Washington reactor meltdown and the accident in the U.S.S.R. atthe Chernobyl site, no one wanted to hear about the use of plutonium. TheUnited States government banned nuclear testing and also ended theproduction of plutonium.(Ref. 5) Now we are in a dilemma.We are in need of future sources of energy to power our nation. We arerunning out of coal and oil to run our power plants.(Ref. 7) We also needit to further our space exploration program. People need t...
