Lasers, heat and a notoriously tricky element are at the center of a quiet revolution in how the United States plans to power ...

Voyages into space are among the most iconic endeavors of the 20th and 21st centuries. Spacecraft that have ventured out to this “final frontier” have relayed stunning images and enlightening ...

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are breathing new life into the scientific ...

Have you ever wondered what does a spacecraft and a pacemaker have in common? Both are powered by plutonium-238 (238 Pu), a versatile isotope, known for its ideal heating properties. Recent research ...

HOUSTON – The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has restored a domestic plutonium-238 production capability after a three-decade lapse by processing a 50-gram sample of the ...

Fifteen years ago, the United States stopped making plutonium-238, one of the most toxic substances known to man. It can be fatal to inhale so much as a speck of the radioactive isotope. But now, ...

It's been a quarter century since the US stopped producing plutonium-238, but shrinking worldwide stockpiles and the need for a suitable deep space power source led NASA and the DOE to begin ...

The quickest way to recognize how rad Earth is, is to leave it. Every time we send a spacecraft into space, we have to send it with everything it will ever need riding on its back or in its belly.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy has produced its first batch of non-weapons grade plutonium, used to power space probes, since a nuclear reactor shutdown 25 ...

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - A nuclear watchdog group is questioning the federal government's plans to consolidate plutonium-238 production at a laboratory in eastern Idaho. Members of Keep Yellowstone ...

Plutonium is not a fun word to speak, hear, or write. Used to depict an actinide metal we've known about for some time, it has become synonymous with human-caused destruction on a hard-to-comprehend ...