J. Robert Oppenheimer: General Advisory Committee Report on the Building of the H-Bomb

Glossary

• 1951 Eniwetok tests: tests of nuclear bombs conducted by the United States at Eniwetok, an atoll in the Marshall Islands
• Argonne National Laboratory: one of the nation’s oldest and largest scientific research facilities, located about twenty-five miles southwest of Chicago
• fissionable: capable of undergoing nuclear fission, or a chain reaction
• further plants, both separation and reactor: reference to the two types of facilities needed to produce nuclear materials, one that separates the fissionable material from other materials, the other that produces the nuclear chain reaction
• neutron: the subatomic particle in the nucleus of an atom that carries no electrical charge
• plutonium: a radioactive element
• thermo-nuclear DD reaction: a nuclear reaction, such as in a hydrogen bomb, that yields charged particles of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope
• tritium: a radioactive isotope of hydrogen
• U-233: an isotope of the uranium atom
• U-235: an isotope of the uranium atom