The plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th 1945, three days after a uranium bomb had destroyed Hiroshima.
The material that went into Fat Man, the plutonium bomb detonated over Nagasaki, was made at Hanford, which at its peak consisted of nine nuclear reactors and five plutonium reprocessing plants.
They were not so sure about the more complex "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, so they tested it in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico, before dropping one on Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
The site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on the Japanese city Nagasaki and continued producing plutonium for the US nuclear arsenal for years.
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It hastened the end of World War II, which concluded within a week after the dropping of a plutonium-based bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
That move prompted Britain, France and Germany to discontinue negotiations aimed at persuading the Iranians to abandon for good their ambitions to enrich uranium and make plutonium (another potential bomb ingredient).
Officials trying to stem nuclear proliferation used to congratulate themselves that only a very few of the known incidences of trafficking involved the sort of uranium and plutonium useful for a bomb.
Mr. GRAHAM ALLISON (Harvard University): During those three years, the North Koreans produced more plutonium, worked on their nuclear bomb test, worked on their missiles, tested their missiles.
Ukraine, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Kazakhstan were among those promising to dispose of bomb-usable enriched uranium or plutonium on their soil.
He compared them with Barringer, and later with the collapsed holes above underground nuclear-bomb tests (where he had been sent prospecting again, this time for plutonium).
But the United States and its allies have asked it to give up the plutonium it already has, an estimated 30 kilograms, as well as details of any other bomb-producing programs.
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