Positive Psychology - 3118 Words

HP310 Individual project Naomi chua According to World Health Organization (WHO)’s definition, health is a state of complete physical, psychological well-being, optimal psychological functioning and social well-being. And health is â€Å"not merely the absence of diseases or infirmity† (WHO, 2000). Contrary to typical understanding of the psychology fields, positive psychology is a science of positive subjective experiences and positive traits, positive institution that promise to improve the quality of life and prevent pathologies (Csikszentmihalyi and Seligman, 2000). There are 3 levels of analysis for positive psychology; subjective level refers to the subjective experiences such as well-being, contentment, and†¦show more content†¦With this, we come to the first step of coping; evaluating the situation. In Lazarus and Folkman’s term, coping starts with the process of appraisal: Primary appraisal and secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal occurs when we’re faced wit h a life challenge, we’ll first ask ourselves if our life is jeopardized. Then we’ll move on to evaluate if that life challenge is worthy to be worried or attended. If we deem that our life is in danger, then we’ll ask whether there’s something we can do about that situation/challenge. That is secondary appraisal. The next process of stress and coping is to employ coping strategies. There are many researchers who made efforts to categorize coping responses. For example, Folkman and Lazarus (1980) have classified coping strategies/techniques to 2 categories: problem-focused and emotion-focused. Amirkhan (1990b, 1994) identified 3 coping strategies; problem solving, seeking support, and avoidance. Another attempt to classify coping strategies is the primary-secondary control model by Rothbaum, Weisz Snyder (1982) and Weisz, Rothbaum Blackburn (1984a and 1984b). Carver et al.’s (1989) COPE scale, consisting of 14 coping styles, is another attempt to classify coping responses. All these coping strategies/ models will be covered over the course of the entire paper. Lazarus and Folkman’sShow MoreRelatedPositive Psychology At Gable And Haidt1098 Words   |  5 PagesPositive psychology according to Gable and Haidt (2005) can be defined as â€Å"the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing of people, groups and institutions† (p. 103). Similarly, it can be described as the study of human strength and virtue to understand positive and emotionally fulfilling behaviour (Sheldon King, 2001). There are three dimensions or levels of positive psychology which are based on aspects of our life experiences. Our positive subjective experiencesRead MoreThe New Era Of Positive Psychology975 Words   |  4 Pagesâ€Å"The New Era of Positive Psychology† by Martin Seligman Summary In Professor Seligman’s TED Talk he presents to us the state of psychology today. Just what is the state of psychology today? According to Seligman it is good, not good, and not good enough. In the â€Å"good† update for psychology today, it is beneficial that psychology is progressing forward. Once what was an extreme science of finding out what is wrong with someone has progressed forward into also finding out how to improve one’s lifeRead MorePositive Psychology5612 Words   |  23 PagesPositive Psychology-A Current perspective Author Krishan Kumar Dr. Rajiv Dogra Corresponding Address Krishan Kumar, M. Sc, M. Phil (M SP), PhD (Pur) Clinical Psychology, Computational Neuroscience National Brain Research Centre, Manesar Email- keshusony@rediffmail.com Ph.no. 9999516319 Dr. Rajiv Dogra Associte Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology Post Graduate College and Medical Sciences, Rohtak Email- Rajeevdogra@rediffmail.com What is positive psychology? Read MorePsychology : Positive And Negative Psychology955 Words   |  4 PagesPositive Psychology We often think of psychology with a negative connotation. A reason for this is that for many years, psychologists focused more on the negative side of psychology. This part of psychology deals with peoples’ symptoms, wounds, disorders, and trauma (Morgan Nemec, 2013). This changed in 2000 when psychologist Martin Seligman founded the science of positive psychology (Schueller Parks, 2014). Although certain aspects of positive psychology were studied long before the branchRead MoreWhat Is Positive Psychology?765 Words   |  4 PagesWhat is Positive Psychology? At a casual glance, positive psychology looks like the study of happiness. It is more than that. Positive psychology attempts to explain what happiness is. It is a school of psychology that aims to help achieve a positive life, not just focusing on mental illness. It is concerned with the self and group positive emotion, action and interaction. A main focus is to help people with their strengths. If they can focus on their strengths and not just their weaknessesRead MoreThe New Psychology Field Of Positive Psychology928 Words   |  4 PagesThe new Psychology field of Positive Psychology promotes a â€Å"flourishing† life dedicated to individuals looking to expand the pleasant, engagement and meaning in their life. Many Positive Psychologist use Gratitude Practice as a method of therapy to aid individuals with a wealth of positive constructs. Before looking into Gratitude Practice it is important to begin the research by taking a look at what Positive psychology is. Pos itive Psychology is a newer field in Psychology focused on the studyRead MorePositive Psychology Influencing: The onset of a Positive Lifestyle and Positive Health982 Words   |  4 PagesPositive Psychology Influencing The Onset of a Positive Lifestyle and Positive Health There have been numerous studies in the realm of Positive Psychology and the effects it can influence in other sectors of a person’s overall wellbeing, especially in terms of attaining a positive mindset and treatment of negative general disorders, the short term benefits of a positive psychological outlook and the long term health and lifestyle benefits that are produced from it. In a 2006 journal article, ParkRead MorePositive Psychology: The Effects of Positive Emotions Essay1426 Words   |  6 PagesPositive psychology describes the effects a positive attitude can have on one’s enjoyment of a situation, people, and life as whole. If one is able to find something good about every situation they encounter, then their overall life experience will be positive. It explains that one’s mindset determines the outcome of a situation, including how well they get along with people around them. Positive emotions are capable of changing not only ones outlook on life, but also their life as a whole. By viewingRead MorePsychology : Positive And Negative Psychology1645 Words   |  7 PagesPositive psychology, is a new field of psychology that draw heavily on humanist influences. This area of psychology places its focus on understanding how to enhance our lives by studying what produces our happiness through the use of scientific methods to understand how this affects us leading healthy, happy and successful lives. Through the belief that society would like to lead meaningful and rewarding lives the goal of positive psychology is to, in addition the other fields of psychology, accompanyRead MorePsychology : The Positive Psychology Movement1269 Words   |  6 PagesOne of the most recent branches of psychology to emerge is the positive psychology movement. Based on the text, positive psychology is one of the most important aspects in determining how to enhance the personality by helping individuals recognize their human potential to learn and achieve . In this assignment one will compare the view points of Maslow, Rogers, and the positive psychology movement concerning individual personality. Recent studies have shown that personality theory and assessment

Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart - 2050 Words

What would you do if Christianity came and took over your world? In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, describes a man who was affected by Christianity which not only destroyed him but also his family and his tribe. Okonkwo is the main character who faces the demise of his world when the missionaries came in and took over his world. Okonkwo is a very independent, impatient African leader and is affected by Christianity, impacting the way he is accepted back into Umofia or the way he lives. Achebe s description of life in the village after colonization, helps to create a setting that condemns colonization. In the Caryl Phillips interview, Achebe believes that â€Å"Conrad is for the colonizing mission, and he concedes that the novel, in part,†¦show more content†¦His father, Unoka lacked judgement and Okonkwo did not like the way his father was. Unoka never knew which direction to go in and was therefore always changing which way to go. Okonkwo does not take kind to this ne w religion and whoever takes up this new religion is considered weak to Okonkwo. With this new religion taking over Okonkwo’s life, he is deeply affected by Christianity when it takes over his son. One part of Okonkwo’s hatred of Christianity was when Nwoye’s decision to convert to this new religion. Okonkwo was already disbelieving of Christianity and didn’t approve of its practices or gods. With seeing his son becoming part of this new religion and him doing the unusual practices was the breaking point for Okonkwo. With Okonkwo knowing that his son has always been different especially from people in the village, Okonkwo belived that his son was very similar to his father Unoka. As Okonkwo considered this, they are similar because they are both weak. This frights Okonkwo, and he prefers it when Nwoye will try to act normal. When Nwoye was interested in the new religion he was scared â€Å"Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith from the very first day, he kept it secret. He dared not go too near the missionaries for fear of his father† (Achebe 149). This was the start of Okonkwo’s life turning upside down even know he did not know about wha t Nwoye was

Business and Management Free Essays

Blyton, P. , Noon, M. (2007), The Realities of Work. We will write a custom essay sample on Business and Management or any similar topic only for you Order Now Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. This Chapter explores the key concepts of survival in the workforce. The aim is to explore how employees survive the alienating tendencies at work by developing different coping strategies in different circumstances. According to Karl Marx employees develop four types of estrangement; self-estrangement, estrangement from the product of their labour, their species being and from others which leads to alienation. Under capitalism)all the means for developing production are transformed into means of power over and exploitation of the producer; that they mutilate the worker into a fragment of a human being, degrade him to become a mere appurtenance, make his work such a torment that its essential meaning is destroyed(Marx, 1930: 713, quoted in Fox, 1974: 224) Blauner suggests that greater automation will free workers hard work of assembly lines and machine minding, it will result in decreasing alienation for employees (Blauner, 1964:182-3) We have acknow ledged the authors and the investigators opinions to alienation. According to the writers there are five main strategies that help to survive alienation tendencies such as fiddling, making out, joking, sabotage and escaping. Michael Burawoy (1979) suggests employees should use the term making out. Making out in Burawoy’s theory suggests employees are allowed to miss behave and control their working day if they are still working within the rules, management’s instructions and tasks are completed. (Burawoy, 1985: 126) Management Today (2000) state fiddling is a rule breaker but managers turn a blind eye. It can be seen in any job from supermarkets to call centres. In call centres employees manipulate the call monitoring system in order to gain extra rest breaks. (Townsend,2005:56) Radcliffe-Brown (1952) is an anthropologist who acknowledged the survival strategy joking. Joking maintains social order, releases tension, challenges authority and forges group identities. However occasional joking can challenge the power of hierarchy. Identified by Linstead (1985a) sabotage can be a result of rational behaviour. It can purposely be a spiteful attempt to ruin or disturb the process or the product. This is where whistle blowing comes in to determine the result of behaviour. Escaping is expressed in two different ways. Physical escape is to temporarily take time off or to permanently quit the job to escape alienation. Mental escape is taking their mind somewhere else so that they can express their own thoughts in their own head. Overall employees should interoperate the five survival strategies’ which will help them to survive the alienation. However employees should interoperate them as a form of consent and not a form of resistance. McHugh, D. , Thompson, P. (2002) Work Organisations: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. In This Chapter the author explores how scientific management and bureaucratisation helped transform the workplace. Fredrick Taylor is known for inventing the term scientific management. Some management and work organisations were already in place ‘the less skilled worker’. It was down to Taylor who acknowledged the influences of other systematic management inventions such as inspection systems, and employment departments. (Urwick and Breech, 1949:33) Nyland, (1988:56) believed that â€Å"The Systematisers† were a diverse group of engineers , accountants, and work managers who argued that US firms had grown to a size where the internal functioning of the enterprise was becoming increasingly chaotic and waist full. This suggests not all work was available to everyone so therefore used his system which he believed was the best to manage the workforce. Bringing a new approach to managerial skills needed a new set of rules to help the labour process that Taylor was most concerned about. New rules meant stricter working environments. Taylor used idea’s to help shape the work place conflicting beaurocratic management. Braverman (1974:120) objects that it sanctions the mistaken view that such work arrangements belongs to large scale organisations rather than a product of capitalist social relations. This suggests not everyone agreed with the theory, some writers said the idea of bureaucrasation and systematic management was problematic. To understand the beucratic rules it needs to be clear through different modes of production and business systems. Clawson (1980; 248) believed Taylorism is in contrast with Weber Stress on the remote and impersonal qualities of beuocrasy. This suggests Taylor and Weber worked in contrast with each other because weber believed in Taylor theory of systematic management. Therefore Webers theory of rationalisation worked with Taylor’s theory. To summarise beaurocratic management has risen in the ervice industry. Recent studies state that evidence is showed in Ritzler’s (1993) ‘The Mcdonaldisation of society’. The authors state the key point of this chapter is that Taylorism and other management theories are distinct elements not packages. People are diverse and uneven when it comes to the legacy of Taylorism. Traditions have in fact shaped the industry aiding managers to use different approaches. Word Count: 796 References Deakins, D Freel, M. (2009) ‘Entrepreneurship and Small Firms’. 5th ed. Midenhead: McGraw Hill. O’Doherty, D. (2007) ‘Introducing Organisational Behaviour and Management’. London: Thompson. Weardon, G. (2012) ‘Eurozone crisis live: Monti to lobby Merkel over bond-buying plan’ The Guardian. 29th August, 2012. Cramer, R. M. (2006) ‘The Great Intimidators’ Havard Business Review. V84 pp. 88-96. ‘ Most companies struggling to be paperless’ Institute of Leadership and Management. 14th August, 2012. http://www. i-l-m. com/ [accessed 29th August 2012]. How to cite Business and Management, Papers

Nuclear Energy (5013 words) Essay Example For Students

Nuclear Energy (5013 words) Essay Nuclear EnergyNuclear EnergyYou are watching the control panels and gages for rector two. Sitting comely you think about how easy your job is. It is a joke! All day you sit around and watch the gages for reactor number two just to make sure they maintain their settings. You dont even need to look at the gages either because a computer automatically regulates them without you. Life is so good. Suddenly all the sirens go of and the gages and displays spin wildly in every direction. The ground shakes and you can hear the sound of a deep rumble. Unknown to you, the reactors cooling pumps have failed to cool the reactors core and in 3 seconds the temperature went from 280 degrees centigrade to 4,000 degrees centigrade. The water that was in the reactor is instantly turned to steam which creates tremendous amount of pressure in the reactor core. Above the reactor core there is a 5 foot thick lead plate and above that there is a meter thick floor composed of iron, barium, serpentine, concre te, and stone. The exploding steam fires the floor up like shrapnel. The metal plate goes through the four foot thick concrete roof like butter and reaches and altitude of sixty meters. You can hear ripping, rending, wrenching, screeching, scraping, tearing sounds of a vast machine breaking apart. L. Ray Silver, a leading author who covered the disaster at Chernobyl, said that within the core, steam reacts with zirconium to produce that first explosive in natures arsenal, hydrogen. Near-molten fuel fragments shatter nearly incandescent graphite, torching chunks of it, exploding the hydrogen. The explosion breaks every pipe in the building rocking it with such power that the building is split into sections (11-13). You look down at your body and notice that it feels hot and your hands look different. Unknown to you a tremendous amount of neutrons are hitting your cells and taking chucks out of your skin. Suddenly everything goes black. The paragraph above describes the scene of what happened at Chernobyl nuclear plant a few years ago. From that time until the present many other smaller accidents have happened. From these accidents many people have died and millions have been indirectly affected. Nuclear energy has far to many negative problems than advantages. From the mining of uranium to disposal of nuclear waist there are problems of such magnitude that no scientist on this earth has an answer for. Nuclear energy has so many problems associated to it that it should be banned from the earth. To understand the threat of nuclear energy we must first understand what happens in a nuclear reaction. Ann E. Weiss, who has written several books on the subject of nuclear energy, described what happens inside a nuclear power plant. In a nuclear reaction the nuclei of its atoms split, producing energy in the form of heat. The heat makes steam which powers a turbine. Fission takes place in a nuclear reactor. The fuel used is pellets of uranium. In a modern reactor, half-inch long pellets of uranium are packed into 12 or 14 foot tubes made of an alloy of the metal zirconium. About 50,000 zircalloy fuel rods make up the reaction core. To control a nuclear reaction control rods made of cadmium is used which absorbs neutrons. With the control rods in place in the core, a chain reaction cannot begin. When the plant operators want to start the chain reaction they activate machinery that pulls the control rods away from the core. Once this is done a single free neutron is enough to set off the reaction. As the reaction continues, a moderator slows the neutrons down enough to ensure that they will continually split more uranium atoms. At the same time, the moderator acts as a coolant. It keep the overall temperature about 300 degrees Celsius. Since the temperature at spots inside the fuel rods may be as high as 1,100 degrees Celsius, enormous amounts of coolant are continually needed to keep the core temperature at the proper level. When the plant must be must be shut down the control rods are lowered all the way back into the core. That brings the chain reaction to a standstill. The core cools, and steam is no longer produced (23-24). In all nuclear reactions use uranium and produce some plutonium. Since nuclear reactions produce a considerable amount of plutonium there are considerable hazards that come along with it. Nader and Abbotts, two men who have a great amount of experience in the nuclear industry, comment that:Plutoniums major dangers include the fact that it is weapons-grade material, that it is highly toxic, and it is extremely long-lasting: it will take 24,000 years for half of it to decay. In addition to the possibility that plutonium could contaminate the environment or the population in an accident, there is also the danger that a terrorist group could steal plutonium for the purposes of fashioning an illicit nuclear weapon. (63)Plutonium-239 is a man-made reactor by-product which emits highly energetic alpha particles. Even though alpha particles can be stopped by a piece of paper that can be very dangerous to tissue if they are taken into the body by ingestion or inhalation. Expressing extreme concern over the issue of plutonium getting into the human body Nad er and Abbotts write:Experiments with dogs show that the inhalation of as little as three millionths of a gram of Pu-239 can cause lung cancer. John Gofman has reported that plutonium and other alpha-emitters, such as curium and americium , when in a form that cannot readily be dissolved by body fluids, represent an inhalation hazard in a class some five orders of magnitude more potent, weight for weight, than potent chemical carcinogens. The fact that plutonium has a very long half-life, 24,000 years, makes it one of the deadliest elements known and one of the most difficult to manage. (78)The reason why plutonium is so dangerous when it gets into the lungs is because plutonium releases radiation to a small mass of the lung at a very short distance. This effect of radiation from plutonium giving a concentrated dose to one small area is much greater than if the same amount of radiation had been uniformly distributed throughout the lung. Another problem with plutonium is its toxicit y. Plutonium is the most toxic of all elements. Fred H. Knelman, who was a senior executive on the nuclear control panel in Washington D.C., wrote, ?One pound of plutonium-239, distributed to the lungs of a large population, could cause between ten and fifteen million lung-cancer deaths? (32). Plutonium is rapidly becoming more and more common throughout the world because it is being produced all the time in nuclear reactions. The Nuclear Control Institute, in Washington D.C., published a paper on the Internet describing the problem of plutonium production. By the turn of the century, 1,400 metric tons of plutonium will have been produced in the spent fuel of nuclear power reactors, and some 300 tons of it will have been separated into weapons-usable form. Less than 18 pounds (8 kilograms) is needed to build a Nagasaki-type bomb. The amounts will continue to grow rapidly. By 2010, there will be 550 tons of separated plutonium in commerce, more than twice the amount now contained in the worlds nuclear arsenals. By that time, Japan will have acquired an amount of plutonium equivalent to the present U.S. military stockpile. (?The Problem?, 2)The quote above has a few hidden statements behind it. First it predicts that soon other nations will have a greater nuclear arsenal than the U.S.A. Also the quote says that plutonium is growing to be an excess product from nuclear reactions and thus other countries who are not economically stable will have a greater tendency to want to sell some plutonium to power hungry politicians for money to help the economy of their own country. The subject of plutonium directly relates to nuclear terrorism. The terrorists holy grail is to build a nuclear bomb. It is becoming increasingly easy to find the knowledge on how to build a nuclear bomb. The only thing that is holding terrorists back is getting their hands on some plutonium or weapons-grade uranium. Christopher K. Mitchell, a student under professor J. Ruvalds, wrote a research report in physics 177N class that stated that when constructing a nuclear weapon, there would be two main issues for a terrorist. The first issue would be the knowledge required about building the bomb and making it work. Essentially, this knowledge is not a great problem. For instance, anyone can purchase a copy of The Los Alamos Primer for approximately twenty-three dollars. This book details the work of scientist who participated in the Manhattan Project tests in New Mexico. Inside the book, a terrorist could find the amount of uranium needed to create a successful nuclear explosion. In addition, the book details the different types of nuclear bombs and how to construct them. According to Carson Mark, a nuclear weapons specialist, a terrorist group would need some specialist, such as a nuclear physicist, a chemist, and an explosives engineer to build a nuclear weapon. In addition, some specialized equi pment would be required. The second issue of building a nuclear weapon is the material needed to fuel the chemical reaction. Of the two issues, this one creates a much larger problem. Until recently, it was nearly impossible for a terrorist to even consider obtaining either bomb grade plutonium or uranium. In the past, these bomb grade fuels would have been nearly impossible to steal and the price to purchase such materials was far above the budget of any terrorist group. Many experts feel that it would cost at least five to ten million dollars to purchase enough plutonium to make a nuclear weapon. Others place the estimate as high as twenty or thirty million dollars (2). The problems of obtaining money and scientists are not big. The Soviet Union has left many of its top nuclear scientists without jobs and money. Many would be happy to get out of their crime ridden country to work for a terrorist group or another country associated with terrorism like Iran or Iraq. Money is not a p roblem for these two countries who hold some of the worlds biggest oil reserves. This paragraph represents only one type of terrorism that can be done with money and talent but what can other terrorist groups do who dont have very much money?One very vulnerable terrorist target is the nuclear powerplants. Scott D. Portzline, who has a Ph.D. is nuclear physics, writes that :Considering the fact that a nuclear plant houses more than a thousand times the radiation as released in an atomic burst, the magnitude of a single attack could reach beyond 100,000 deaths and the immediate loss of tens of billions of dollars. The land and properties destroyed (your insurance wont cover nuclear disasters) would remain useless for decades and would become a stark monument reminding the world of the terrorists ideology. With more than 100 reactors in the United States alone, if one is successfully destroyed, just threatening additional attacks could instill the sort of high-impact terror which is be ing sought by a new breed of terrorists. (1)For years, what has caused concern for many observers and several federal oversight committees is a report on the potential for damage from truck bombs. Atheism EssayThe paragraph above describes the scene of what happened at Chernobyl nuclear plant a few years ago. From that time until the present many other smaller accidents have happened. From these accidents many people have died and millions have been indirectly affected. Nuclear energy has far to many negative problems than advantages. From the mining of uranium to disposal of nuclear waist there are problems of such magnitude that no scientist on this earth has an answer for. Nuclear energy has so many problems associated to it that it should be banned from the earth. To understand the threat of nuclear energy we must first understand what happens in a nuclear reaction. Ann E. Weiss, who has written several books on the subject of nuclear energy, described what happens inside a nuclear power plant. In a nuclear reaction the nuclei of its atoms split, producing energy in the form of heat. The heat makes steam which powers a turbine. Fission takes place in a nuclear reactor. The fuel used is pellets of uranium. In a modern reactor, half-inch long pellets of uranium are packed into 12 or 14 foot tubes made of an alloy of the metal zirconium. About 50,000 zircalloy fuel rods make up the reaction core. To control a nuclear reaction control rods made of cadmium is used which absorbs neutrons. With the control rods in place in the core, a chain reaction cannot begin. When the plant operators want to start the chain reaction they activate machinery that pulls the control rods away from the core. Once this is done a single free neutron is enough to set off the reaction. As the reaction continues, a moderator slows the neutrons down enough to ensure that they will continually split more uranium atoms. At the same time, the moderator acts as a coolant. It keep the overall temperature about 300 degrees Celsius. Since the temperature at spots inside the fuel rods may be as high as 1,100 degrees Celsius, enormous amounts of coolant are continually needed to keep the core temperature at the proper level. When the plant must be must be shut down the control rods are lowered all the way back into the core. That brings the chain reaction to a standstill. The core cools, and steam is no longer produced (23-24). In all nuclear reactions use uranium and produce some plutonium. Since nuclear reactions produce a considerable amount of plutonium there are considerable hazards that come along with it. Nader and Abbotts, two men who have a great amount of experience in the nuclear industry, comment that:Plutoniums major dangers include the fact that it is weapons-grade material, that it is highly toxic, and it is extremely long-lasting: it will take 24,000 years for half of it to decay. In addition to the possibility that plutonium could contaminate the environment or the population in an accident, there is also the danger that a terrorist group could steal plutonium for the purposes of fashioning an illicit nuclear weapon. (63)Plutonium-239 is a man-made reactor by-product which emits highly energetic alpha particles. Even though alpha particles can be stopped by a piece of paper that can be very dangerous to tissue if they are taken into the body by ingestion or inhalation. Expressing extreme concern over the issue of plutonium getting into the human body Nad er and Abbotts write:Experiments with dogs show that the inhalation of as little as three millionths of a gram of Pu-239 can cause lung cancer. John Gofman has reported that plutonium and other alpha-emitters, such as curium and americium , when in a form that cannot readily be dissolved by body fluids, represent an inhalation hazard in a class some five orders of magnitude more potent, weight for weight, than potent chemical carcinogens. The fact that plutonium has a very long half-life, 24,000 years, makes it one of the deadliest elements known and one of the most difficult to manage. (78)The reason why plutonium is so dangerous when it gets into the lungs is because plutonium releases radiation to a small mass of the lung at a very short distance. This effect of radiation from plutonium giving a concentrated dose to one small area is much greater than if the same amount of radiation had been uniformly distributed throughout the lung. Another problem with plutonium is its toxicit y. Plutonium is the most toxic of all elements. Fred H. Knelman, who was a senior executive on the nuclear control panel in Washington D.C., wrote, ?One pound of plutonium-239, distributed to the lungs of a large population, could cause between ten and fifteen million lung-cancer deaths? (32). Plutonium is rapidly becoming more and more common throughout the world because it is being produced all the time in nuclear reactions. The Nuclear Control Institute, in Washington D.C., published a paper on the Internet describing the problem of plutonium production. By the turn of the century, 1,400 metric tons of plutonium will have been produced in the spent fuel of nuclear power reactors, and some 300 tons of it will have been separated into weapons-usable form. Less than 18 pounds (8 kilograms) is needed to build a Nagasaki-type bomb. The amounts will continue to grow rapidly. By 2010, there will be 550 tons of separated plutonium in commerce, more than twice the amount now contained in the worlds nuclear arsenals. By that time, Japan will have acquired an amount of plutonium equivalent to the present U.S. military stockpile. (?The Problem?, 2)The quote above has a few hidden statements behind it. First it predicts that soon other nations will have a greater nuclear arsenal than the U.S.A. Also the quote says that plutonium is growing to be an excess product from nuclear reactions and thus other countries who are not economically stable will have a greater tendency to want to sell some plutonium to power hungry politicians for money to help the economy of their own country. The subject of plutonium directly relates to nuclear terrorism. The terrorists holy grail is to build a nuclear bomb. It is becoming increasingly easy to find the knowledge on how to build a nuclear bomb. The only thing that is holding terrorists back is getting their hands on some plutonium or weapons-grade uranium. Christopher K. Mitchell, a student under professor J. Ruvalds, wrote a research report in physics 177N class that stated that when constructing a nuclear weapon, there would be two main issues for a terrorist. The first issue would be the knowledge required about building the bomb and making it work. Essentially, this knowledge is not a great problem. For instance, anyone can purchase a copy of The Los Alamos Primer for approximately twenty-three dollars. This book details the work of scientist who participated in the Manhattan Project tests in New Mexico. Inside the book, a terrorist could find the amount of uranium needed to create a successful nuclear explosion. In addition, the book details the different types of nuclear bombs and how to construct them. According to Carson Mark, a nuclear weapons specialist, a terrorist group would need some specialist, such as a nuclear physicist, a chemist, and an explosives engineer to build a nuclear weapon. In addition, some specialized equi pment would be required. The second issue of building a nuclear weapon is the material needed to fuel the chemical reaction. Of the two issues, this one creates a much larger problem. Until recently, it was nearly impossible for a terrorist to even consider obtaining either bomb grade plutonium or uranium. In the past, these bomb grade fuels would have been nearly impossible to steal and the price to purchase such materials was far above the budget of any terrorist group. Many experts feel that it would cost at least five to ten million dollars to purchase enough plutonium to make a nuclear weapon. Others place the estimate as high as twenty or thirty million dollars (2). The problems of obtaining money and scientists are not big. The Soviet Union has left many of its top nuclear scientists without jobs and money. Many would be happy to get out of their crime ridden country to work for a terrorist group or another country associated with terrorism like Iran or Iraq. Money is not a p roblem for these two countries who hold some of the worlds biggest oil reserves. This paragraph represents only one type of terrorism that can be done with money and talent but what can other terrorist groups do who dont have very much money?One very vulnerable terrorist target is the nuclear powerplants. Scott D. Portzline, who has a Ph.D. is nuclear physics, writes that :Considering the fact that a nuclear plant houses more than a thousand times the radiation as released in an atomic burst, the magnitude of a single attack could reach beyond 100,000 deaths and the immediate loss of tens of billions of dollars. The land and properties destroyed (your insurance wont cover nuclear disasters) would remain useless for decades and woedCorinne Brown, and Robert Munroe. Time Bomb, Understanding the Treat of Nuclear Power. New York: William Morrow Company, Inc, 1981Knelman, Fred H. Nuclear Energy The Unforgiving Technology. Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1976. Mitchell, Christopher K. ?Nuclear Terrorism.? 14 Nov. 1996 Available : http://www.nucl.com/terror.html. ?Nuclear Waste: The Big Picture.? 10 Nov. 1996. Available: http://www.sfo.com/~rherried/waste.html. Portzline, Scott D. ?Nuclear Terrorism.? 10 Nov. 1996. Available: http://www.nci.com/terrorism.html. Ralph Nader, and John Abbotts. The Menace of Atomic Energy. New York: W.W. Norton Company Inc, 1977. Silver, L. Ray. Fallout From Chernobyl. Toronto: Deneau Publishers Company LTD, 1987. ?The Problem.? 10 Nov. 1996. Available: http://www.wideopen.igc.org/nci/prob.htm. ?Uranium: Its Uses and Hazards.? 20 Nov. 1996. Available : http://www.ieer.org/ieer/fctsheet/uranium.html. Weiss, Ann E. The Nuclear Question. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1981. Science