atom-splitting

China is preparing to restart its stalled domestic nuclear reactor program after a three-year moratorium on new approvals, but at a state laboratory in the city of Hefei, in China’s Anhui province, scientists are looking beyond crude atom-splitting in order to pursue nuclear fusion, where power is generated by combining nuclei together, an endeavor likened by skeptics to “putting the sun in a box”.

By 1942, the British knew that Germany had chosen heavy water, or deuterium oxide, to moderate atom-splitting chain reactions to produce bomb-grade plutonium.

In short: I’m not one of those knife geeks for whom nothing less than an atom-splitting edge is acceptable.

Atom-splitting would not begin until after the reactor is far from Earth.

The gesture is startling, atom-splitting, because it’s so unexpected, so tender.