Plutonium and Uranium Micrometallurgy

Abstract

This article was prepared in 1958 as a report to be read at the 2nd Geneva Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. For reasons unrelated to the authors, the article was never published. Since the article contains the results of investigations of the first microquantities of metallic plutonium obtained in the USSR, which is the most important stage in the development of the atomic project, the publication of this article is of great scientific and historical interest. The article is printed with some negligible abridgements but without any changes to the textural content of the variant prepared by the authors, so that the citations to the literature refer to that time.

All participants in the investigations were staff members of the Institute now named after Academician A. A. Bochvar. Among the authors who first obtained metallic plutonium in our country, V. N. Gulyaeva and A. G. Savenkova are still alive. Unfortunately, the scientific director of these works, A. N. Vol'skii, and Doctors of Technical Sciences Ya. M. Sterlin and V. S. Sokolov, who performed the work, died before publication.

In our country, experiments on the reduction of plutonium halides by alkaline metals began on June 1, 1948. As recorded in the report of Laboratory No. 5 of the All-Russia Scientific-Research Institute of Standardization in Machine Engineering, the first substantial regulus of metallic plutonium was obtained by September 10, 1948.