Plutonium Quotes

• Plutonium has a quite extraordinary relationship with people. They made it, and it kills them.

  Ian Hacking

  People, Made, Extraordinary

  Ian Hacking (1999). “The Social Construction of What?”, p.105, Harvard University Press

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• It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

  Albert Einstein

  Real Men, Evil, Nuclear

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.30, St. Martin's Press

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• The concept of this so-called "TerraPower reactor" is that you, in the same reactor, you both burn and breed. So, instead of making plutonium and then extracting it, we take uranium - the 99.3 percent that you normally don't do anything with - we convert that, and we burn it.

  Bill Gates

  Percent, Uranium, Concepts

  "Bill Gates’ Plutonium Pipe Dream: Convert Mountains of Depleted Uranium at Paducah to Power Earth for Centuries". "EnviroNews DC News Bureau" with Josh Cunnings, www.environews.tv. March 14, 2016.

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• I'm sure that in 1985, plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 1955, it's a little hard to come by.

  Doc Brown

  Littles, My Future, Marty

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• My job was to produce plutonium that was used for atomic bomb.

  Mordechai Vanunu

  Jobs, Bombs, Atomic Bomb

  "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.counterpunch.org. August 18, 2004.

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• Nor are we the culmination of evolution, except in the sense that there has never been another species so bizarrely ingenious that it could create both iambic pentameter and plutonium.

  David Quammen

  Evolution, Culmination, Species

  David Quammen (2014). “Monster Of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind”, p.17, Random House

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• Once we open the door to the plutonium economy, we expose ourselves to absolutely terrible, horrifying risks from these people.

  David R. Brower

  Doors, People, Risk

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• Here seems now no reasonable justification for continuing any civil plutonium program.

  Jinzaburo Takagi

  Program, Justification, Continuing

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• To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn't do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress. So when Bush came into the presidency, North Korea had enough uranium or plutonium for maybe one or two bombs, but then very limited missile capacity. During the Bush years it's exploded. The reason is, he immediately canceled the diplomacy and he's pretty much blocked it ever since.

  Noam Chomsky

  Korea, Years, Two

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• We know North Korea has the plutonium that can go into the bomb.

  Mohamed ElBaradei

  Korea, Bombs, Knows

  "North Korea an 'imminent threat'". Interview with Christiane Amanpour, www.cnn.com. March 18, 2005.

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• Every actor looks all his life for a part that will combine his talents with his personality... 'The Odd Couple' was mine. That was the plutonium I needed. It all started happening after that.

  Walter Matthau

  Couple, Personality, Looks

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity.

  James Buchan

  Years, Tasks, Three

  "A complete waste of energy". www.theguardian.com. September 12, 2002.

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• There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium.

  David R. Brower

  Safe, Matter, Waste

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• Researches at Yale found a connection between brain cancer and work environment. The No. 1 most dangerous job for developing brain cancer? Plutonium hat model.

  Jimmy Fallon

  Jobs, Cancer, Yale

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• Plutonium is so hazardous that if you had a fully developed nuclear economy with breeder reactors fueled with plutonium, and you managed to contain the plutonium 99.99 percent perfectly, it would still cause somewhere between 140,000 and 500,000 extra lung-cancer fatalities each year.

  John Gofman

  Cancer, Years, Causes

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• Our flame is taking the normal depleted uranium - the 99.3 percent that's cheap as heck, and there's a pile of it sitting in Paducah, Kentucky that's enough to power the United States for hundreds and hundreds of years. You're taking that and you are converting it to plutonium - and then you're burning that.

  Bill Gates

  Kentucky, Flames, Years

  "Bill Gates’ Plutonium Pipe Dream: Convert Mountains of Depleted Uranium at Paducah to Power Earth for Centuries". "EnviroNews DC News Bureau" with Josh Cunnings, www.environews.tv. March 14, 2016.

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• The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

  Albert Einstein

  Real, Heart, Men

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• What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

  Johnny Carson

  Character, Modern Life, Dangerous

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• Most of my scientific work has been basic research. There were no immediate uses for my discoveries, but today the radioisotopes are the workhorses of nuclear medicine, an isotope of plutonium is a major energy source in the space program, and the element americium is critical to the smoke detectors in every house in the country.

  Glenn T. Seaborg

  Country, Space, Discovery

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• Chips of plutonium are twinkling in every lung.

  Kate Bush

  Chips, Twinkling, Lungs

  Song: Breathing, Album: Never For Ever, 1980

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• If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it's an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that's true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia.

  Helen Caldicott

  Cancer, Iodine, Cells

  "Prescription for Survival". A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, www.democracynow.org. March 30, 2011.

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• It would be, in fact, very ominous if Iraq were to be able to get weapon-usable material, hydro-plutonium or highly enriched uranium from abroad.

  Mohamed ElBaradei

  Iraq, Would Be, Weapons

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• I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use.

  Mark Oliphant

  Country, Weapons, Favour

  "Portraits in Science". P. 31. Book by Ann Moyal, 1994.

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• My recent activities have been concentrated on criticism on and actions against Japan's and worldwide plutonium programs, since it is, as I believe, one of the greatest threats to the world.

  Jinzaburo Takagi

  Believe, Japan, Criticism

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• Robert Redford ... has turned almost alarmingly blond-he's gone past platinum, he must be into plutonium; his hair is coordinated with his teeth.

  Pauline Kael

  Past, Hair, Teeth

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