Why do we use Uranium and Plutonium for nukes? Is it possible to use other elements?
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They are the only ones that are economically fissile. Other elements have been examined in the past and are fissile. Neptunium-235, -236, and -237 are all believed to be fissile, but aren’t found in nature and they’d have to be extracted from spent uranium or plutonium fuel – so there’s no point in using them.
For a long time it was thought that the vanishingly rare isotope protactinium-231 was also fissile. During the 1950s, there was a great deal of interest at using it in bombs in the UK who looked at extracting it from uranium mining tailings. They spent about $500,000 on a pilot scheme and created the world’s largest stockpile of the isotope – all 125g of it. More recent calculations show that the isotope is not fissile, so goodness only knows what we’ve done with it.
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