Plutonium: Pros and Cons

Well, the title explains itself. Here is, honestly, an essay on the positives and negatives of plutonium. Don't really bother reading it unless you, like me, had/have an assignment on plutonium due in school:

It seems that whenever mankind discovers a substance that can change the way humans live for the better, something about the substance’s property is discovered making it more destructive than it is useful. Plutonium is no exception to this pattern. Plutonium is a substance that was first prepared in a useable form in 1940 by an American chemist: Glenn T. Seaborg. His achievement was seen as a breakthrough is the history of science while his discoveries were put to use in the years to come. As the world soon discovered, plutonium was doubtlessly a chemical with many pros and many cons.

A substance with such a large historical significance had to have some scientific value. Sure enough, plutonium was and still is used for the better in many different ways. The first and foremost of these uses is for nuclear energy. This form of power is very common amongst today’s society and is a highly effective alternative energy source. If handled properly, plutonium/nuclear energy is a very environmental-friendly form of energy, as well. For example, plutonium-238 (a form of plutonium) was used several times by NASA to power equipment on the moon. Another useful property of plutonium is its ability to give off heat. Although the manner in which it gives off heat is highly unsafe, this property of the substance can be used to heat non-living objects or places. Due to plutonium’s energy potential, it is considered the most economically important transurainium element known to date.

Of course, alongside the many pros of plutonium are the many more cons. Plutonium’s relevance to historic disasters is unforgettable. The most famous use of plutonium was during WWII in the “Atom Bomb.” Americans used the radioactive properties of plutonium to develop a bomb and drop it on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The rubble they left behind was embedded there for many years to come and was seen as an unforgivable crime. When plutonium was used in this “atom bomb,” its intense radioactive property spread a great amount of heat around a large radius of the impact point of the bomb. Henceforth, any inhabitants died immediately and any life-form that entered the impact zone for several years experienced great internal and external damage. This historic fiasco alone illustrates the very reason plutonium is handled with great care today and is forbidden to be used as a weapon. This substance becomes a yellowish color through oxidation in its solid or liquid form but has a terrible effect on the environment in any of its states. Plutonium is an extremely hazardous poison due to how radioactive it is as a substance. In regards to plutonium’s use for energy, the substance is a very fragile element and can cause an immense amount of destruction if handled in even a slightly wrong way.

Plutonium is a good and bad part of our lives today. The society’s view on this element all depends on how it is used. However, used in a beneficial or destructive manner, plutonium remains a highly hazardous and poisonous substance for organisms and the environment alike. Just a few pros and cons of this element can never change that fact.