The core of the Fat Boy bomb, which leveled two square miles of Nagasak, weighed 13.6 pounds. It was about the size of a softball. Photo by Diana Polekhina, Unsplash, cropped.
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I am one of those people who hates the word “utilize.” The logic of the English language would seem to be that to utilize something is to alter it to give it utility that it didn’t originally have. One example is to punch holes in the bottom of a bucket so you can use it to shower while you’re camping.
This may be, under my own rules, the first time I have ever made a valid use of “utilize.” It is the story about Trump’s Executive Order 14302, titled “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Base.” That order directs the US Department of Energy to give weapons-grade plutonium to private industries to use in nuclear reactors. Never mind that no reactor of that type has ever been built. The administration wants to utilize bomb-grade plutonium to be fuel for nuclear power plants.
The amount of plutonium under discussion is to be twenty metric tons, or 44,000 pounds. The Fat Man bomb used on Nagasaki contained about 13.66 pounds of plutonium. It leveled about two square miles of the city. So 44,000 pounds is enough to make thousands of such bombs, each capable of leveling about two square miles of a city.
