Nuclear Facts

A fully developed hurricane releases as much heat energy as a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes!

The IRS employees tax manual has instructions for collecting taxes after a nuclear war.

Three Mile Island is only 2 1/2 miles long.

During the Cold War, the US had planned to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon.

In 1976, Princeton junior John Aristotle Phillips wrote a physics term paper detailing how to build a nuclear bomb using only publicly available information. He received an A, but the paper was immediately classified by the government and he was visited by FBI agents and Pakistani officials seeking the design.

A coal power station puts 100 times more radiation into the air than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

Nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million deaths between 1971-2009 as a result of lower air pollution from reduced coal usage according to NASA.

A 17-year-old Eagle Scout in Michigan built a homemade neutron source in his backyard shed after teaching himself nuclear physics. David Hahn collected radioactive materials from household items—americium from smoke detectors, thorium from lantern mantles, and radium from antique clocks—and his experiments triggered a federal Superfund cleanup.