Environmental Effects
- Gallium is sometimes used to hold plutonium pits together, but often begins to corrode some of the metals surrounding it and causes the plutonium to be unusable unless the gallium is removed altogether. To remove the gallium, however, large amounts of water would be used and would then be polluted from the radioactive substances that come out of the process. Scientists are still working on new ways to clean the gallium out of the plutonium that would not be harmful to the environment.