Plutonium (Pu) - The Transuranic Earth

The elements that, over time, filled the periodic table's empty boxes were not only discovered in the crust of the earth, but also made in laboratories and in the transformed nature created by thermonuclear explosions. As the US nuclear program spread Plutonium across the earth, it created a planetary-scale signature of human intervention that some now use to date the onset of the Anthropocene. Today, this capacity to transform environments at planetary scales is radicalized in geoengineering schemes for planetary carbon control, extending and transforming the strategic rationalities, domains of expert authority, and moral frameworks of the nuclear age, reanimating them in planetary form.