How to Use plutonium in a Sentence

plutonium

noun
  • This new warhead will require its own new kind of weapons-grade plutonium core.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 28 Jan. 2020
  • Not one word was mentioned about plutonium from the former plant site.
    — Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
  • The shoot-out with the Libyans is replaced by a plutonium mishap, and the dog is gone, too.
    — Frank Rizzo, Variety, 3 Aug. 2023
  • That's a big ask at a time when plutonium for spaceflight is still at a premium.
    — Nola Taylor Tillman, Space.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Last year, as crews demolished a plant, unknown amounts of plutonium dust were swept up and blown for miles.
    — latimes.com, 18 Apr. 2018
  • The power plants could also make weapons-grade plutonium.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 26 Dec. 2022
  • Conley, who had not fished since summer, had all of the energy of a plutonium sphere.
    — Bryan Hendricks, Arkansas Online, 25 Jan. 2026
  • Heavy water is used in nuclear power plants as well as for weapons-grade plutonium.
    — Patrick Sykes, Fortune, 29 Mar. 2026
  • But our guys don’t get rid of the opposition by sticking plutonium in their teacups.
    — Joe Queenan, WSJ, 24 Nov. 2018
  • There’s a bit of talk about uranium and plutonium and of fusion and fission.
    — Charles Seife, Scientific American, 2 Aug. 2023
  • In midair, the grains melted and fused together with plutonium and metals from the bomb.
    — Ross Andersen, The Atlantic, 24 Oct. 2024
  • The bombs’ nuclear warheads weren’t armed, but their plutonium cores were.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Apr. 2026
  • Los Alamos is on overdrive due to the demand for plutonium pits.
    — Davis Winkie, USA Today, 19 May 2025
  • For example, that scene where the plutonium bullet slides down a tube toward the center of the bomb?
    — Beatrice Verhoeven, The Hollywood Reporter, 11 Jan. 2024
  • Thousands of workers moved into the site where plutonium was produced for use in atomic bombs.
    — Nicole Chavez, CNN, 20 May 2017
  • Tungsten, gold, and plutonium would all also be good values to cram into the flat-rate shipping box.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 25 Apr. 2022
  • Downe is the kind of rock lifer able to wade through grunge-era backlash and decades of plutonium-level partying and live to tell.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al.com, 9 July 2019
  • The plant has the capacity to make enough plutonium to power an atomic bomb every year.
    — Sarah Aires, Woman's Day, 2 Apr. 2013
  • The Hanford site near Richland was used to make plutonium for atomic weapons.
    — Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times, 11 Dec. 2018
  • And the plant used to make plutonium for weapons has been shut down and restarted periodically.
    — Rachel Becker, The Verge, 20 Apr. 2018
  • In 1994, North Korea was thought to have one or two bombs’ worth of plutonium.
    — Michael J. Mazarr, Fortune, 21 Aug. 2017
  • The plutonium was originally used to create a Cold War-era fleet of weapons.
    — Ella Nilsen, CNN Money, 2 June 2026
  • Most of the ions passed through the target, but over the course of a few weeks, a few collided with a plutonium nucleus and fused into flerovium.
    — Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 12 Feb. 2021
  • Tens of thousands of workers were recruited from all over the country to build the world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor.
    — Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 19 Jan. 2026
  • However, of the 13 pounds of plutonium in the bomb's core -- only three points were combusted.
    — Maria Elena Salinas, ABC News, 2 Nov. 2023
  • Over the course of about 90 years, only half the plutonium in an RTG will have decayed away.
    — Benjamin Roulston, The Conversation, 14 Mar. 2025
  • Iran’s Arak reactor was destroyed and, with it, any near-term chance that Iran could produce weapons-grade plutonium.
    — Richard Nephew, Foreign Affairs, 26 June 2025
  • Plutonium-238 is not weapons plutonium.
    — Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 14 Nov. 2025
  • Tungsten is a heavy metal of extreme density—like plutonium, but cheap and not radioactive.
    — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 9 Feb. 2026
  • These reactors can generate plutonium as a byproduct, which can be used in nuclear weapons.
    — Sujita Sinha, Interesting Engineering, 30 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'plutonium.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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