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Haloes from plutonium minerals and fission alphas?

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Abstract

The normal alpha decay of naturally occurring 244Pu can be expected to have produced pleochroic haloes detectable in existing rocks. Several methods of identifying such haloes are described here. Giant haloes might also be produced by the α particles that occasionally accompany the spontaneous fission of 244Pu. It is plausible to speculate that in ideal circumstances such gaint haloes might be as large as 100 µm, and that the X rays recently induced from central inclusions of giant haloes and identified as L rays of Z = 126 might instead have been K X rays from Te fission fragments.

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Holbrow, C. Haloes from plutonium minerals and fission alphas?. Nature 265, 504–508 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/265504a0

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