How to Use fissile in a Sentence

fissile

adjective
Definition of fissilenext
  • Amid the fissile atmosphere in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, a single mistake could unleash catastrophe.
    — Sam Kiley, CNN, 19 July 2019
  • North Korea has continued to churn out fissile material and is no longer an isolated pariah on the world stage.
    — Washington Post, 2 July 2019
  • Yet, Iran hawks argue that Biden should use the Trump-era sanctions to press for a deal that eliminates the regime’s capacity to enrich fissile material.
    — Joel Gehrke, Washington Examiner, 12 Nov. 2020
  • But Mr Kim shows no sign of being willing to denuclearise in the way America wants him to, and continues to churn out fissile material for bombs.
    — The Economist, 28 June 2019
  • Under that deal, in exchange for the lifting of Western economic sanctions, Iran agreed that no fissile material — the makings of bomb fuel — would be put in the centrifuges spinning at the site.
    — Michael Wolgelenter, New York Times, 5 Nov. 2019
  • The American side would like to all but eliminate fissile material in North Korea.
    — NBC News, 29 May 2018
  • Experts say North Korea has as many as 60 nuclear weapons and produces enough fissile material to add another dozen each year.
    — Steve Chapman, chicagotribune.com, 21 May 2021
  • The aging facility about 60 miles north of Pyongyang was once the main source of its fissile material, turning out roughly enough plutonium each year for one atomic bomb.
    — Washington Post, 9 Oct. 2019
  • When there are enough fissile atoms close together — a quantity known as critical mass — the particles ejected by fission can strike other fissile atoms, triggering more atoms to split apart and so on.
    — Umair Irfan, Vox, 11 June 2018
  • His father, a former merchant marine who had retrained as a nuclear engineer, came to Richland to work for a plant that supplied fissile material to the Manhattan Project.
    — Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 29 May 2017
  • And this means that Iran can distribute this capacity to a place that might be difficult to attack, difficult to discover and would allow Iran to quickly develop the fissile material for a weapon.
    — CBS News, 3 Nov. 2021
  • As for North Korea’s stockpile of fissile material, estimates based on scraps of intelligence have allowed arms-control experts to draw a few rough conclusions.
    — Jonathan Cheng, WSJ, 8 June 2018
  • North Korea was estimated to possess enough fissile material for about 10-20 nuclear warheads, an increase on the estimates of previous years, Sipri said.
    — David Tweed, Bloomberg.com, 3 July 2017
  • Most intriguingly, Obama proposed a new treaty to halt production of fissile materials intended for use in nuclear weapons.
    — Nathan Hodge, WIRED, 6 Apr. 2009
  • Kim’s arsenal of 30 to 60 nuclear warheads remains and more fissile material is being produced daily.
    — Trudy Rubin, The Mercury News, 8 July 2019
  • Initial actions could include locking in a freeze on nuclear and missile testing and halting fissile material production.
    — Kelsey Davenport, Time, 13 June 2018
  • Those early nuclear reactors allowed North Korea to gain the technical sophistication, as well as a source of fissile material, for its future weapons program.
    — Joby Warrick, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Under the agreement, Iran is allowed limited research and development on advanced centrifuges, which accelerate the production of fissile material that can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
    — Erin Cunningham, Washington Post, 9 Sep. 2019
  • McMillan initially promised to train fissile material handlers to be more heedful of plutonium-handling perils, for example, and to bring the inventory and safety documents guiding their work up to date.
    — R. Jeffrey Smith, Science | AAAS, 30 June 2017
  • While negotiations stalled, North Korea is believed to have continued to produce fissile materials.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Centrifuges, which change the chemical properties of uranium to separate out the most fissile isotope – a material capable of sustaining a nuclear fission chain reaction called U-235.
    — Tanya Edwards, refinery29.com, 9 Jan. 2020
  • China's stockpile of fissile materials--plutonium and highly enriched uranium--is only enough for about 250 nuclear weapons.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 24 Jan. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fissile.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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