Spontaneous combustion is not high on most people’s list of worries, but when it happens to materials at one of the world’s oldest and largest storage centres for weapons-grade uranium, it is a different matter.
On 22 September, the plastic wrapping around some uranium at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, burst into flames as a technician was removing it inside a glovebox. Exposed to air, the uranium had heated up and ignited the plastic.
The fire took place in a large wooden warehouse built in 1944 to help the Manhattan Project, set up to develop nuclear…
