Posted on 07/21/2005 11:25:01 AM PDT by Ditto
Yes
Might do very well for a sailboat keel. Might even keep barnacles off the hull.
No, the plutonium in the Fat Man device serves the same function as the highly enriched uranium in the Little Boy device. It is "fuel" not the trigger, which is made of [mumble], [mumble], [mumble] (I forget exactly what the trigger was). Conventional high explosives are used to force the nuclear material into a supercritcal configuration, whether it's plutonium or uranium.
Yep.
Tastes like chicken too.
The citation is about the production of Pu-238, which is not used in nuclear weapons. It will be used as a power source.
The "trigger" was made of polonium and beryllium, and (I believe) some other fairly exotic materials. The guys at Los Alamos called the triggers "Urchins," for reasons that are nuclear. I mean unclear.
(steely)
The article states the production will be used for " secret projects". What - secret power sources? I suppose that could be.
This was all calculated out on paper and with slide rules right?... if so, it's worrisome since then someone else could duplicate a Trinity type Pu bomb the same way. Brains aren't any less smart today then they were then, and as for getting the high explosive du jour, the gents who bombed Britain twice this month seem to show that isn't hard to do nowadays.
It's even easier, as pointed out by Leo Szilard, because after the Alamagordo test, they KNOW it can be done.
Bump for later reading - interesting stuff.
With the added feature that if someone tried to tamper with them, they went boom??? :-)
Read later.
I guess it's a resource issue, getting the Pu. And to do that by themselves, they need a lot of U of the right kind and that's fiendishly difficult and expensive. At least that's how I'm reading the thread here.
Now that we've all chatted about Uranium and Plutonium and nuclear bombs, I wonder if Echelon and the CIA will swoop down upon Free Republic :-] Well, so long as we don't mention the T-word, we may be safe.... :-]
Simply getting some high explosives isn't nearly enough to make an atomic bomb.
Glad to hear that. But couldn't they make a really gnarly fizzle???
Hey there's an idea... a Pluto-Cola.
I'm already selling it online. Iran ordered 12,000,000,000,0000 cases for "peaceful research". I'm rich! I sure hope they don't figure out it's just pig piss.
Somewhere I have a document that talks about the August 21, 1945 accident and others. Luckily someone has posted the information online:
FATALITY FROM CRITICAL MASS EXPERIMENTS
Los Alamos, N. Mex., Aug. 21, 1945
During the process of making critical mass studies and measurements, an employee [Harry Daghlian] working in the laboratory at night alone (except for a guard seated 12 feet away) was stacking blocks of tamper material around a mass of fissionable material.
As the assembly neared a critical configuration, the employee was lifting one last piece of tamper material which was quite heavy. As this piece neared the setup, the instrument indicated that fission multiplication would be produced, and as the employee moved his hand to set the block at a distance from the pile, he dropped the block, which landed directly on top of the setup.
A "blue glow" was observed and the employee proceeded to disassemble the critical material and its tamper. In doing so, he added heavily to the radiation dosage to his hands and arms.
The employee received sufficient radiation dosage to result in injuries from which he died 28 days later.
The guard suffered no permanent injury. (See TID-5360, p. 2.)
Here's the Louis Slotin accident (which was depicted in the 1989 movie "Fat Man and Little Boy"):
INADVERTENT SUPERCRITICALITY RESULTS IN DEATH
Los Alamos, N. Mex., May 21, 1946
A senior scientist [Louis Slotin] was demonstrating the technique of critical assembly and associated studies and measurements to another scientist. The particular technique employed in the demonstration was to bring a hollow hemisphere of beryllium around a mass of fissionable material which was resting in a similar lower hollow hemisphere.
The system was checked with two one-inch spacers between the upper hemisphere and the lower shell which contained the fissionable material; the system was subcritical at this time.
Then the spacers were removed so that one edge of the upper hemisphere rested on the lower shell while the other edge of the upper hemisphere was supported by a screwdriver. This latter edge was permitted to approach the lower shell slowly. While one hand held the screwdriver, the other hand was holding the upper shell with the thumb placed in an opening at the polar point.
At that time, the screwdriver apparently slipped and the upper shell fell into position around the fissionable material. Of the eight people in the room, two were directly engaged in the work leading to this incident.
The "blue glow" was observed, a heat wave felt, and immediately the top shell was slipped off and everyone left the room. The scientist who was demonstrating the experiment received sufficient dosage to result in injuries from which he died nine days later. The scientist assisting received sufficient radiation dosage to cause serious injuries and some permanent partial disability.
The other six employees in the room suffered no permanent injury. (See TID-5360, p. 4.)
But the one that always horrified me was this one:
FATAL INJURY ACCOMPANIES CRITICALITY ACCIDENT
Los Alamos, N. Mex., Dec. 30, 1958
The chemical operator introduced what was believed to be a dilute plutonium solution from one tank into another known to contain more plutonium in emulsion. Solids containing plutonium were probably washed from the bottom of the first tank with nitric acid and the resultant mixture of nitric acid and plutonium-bearing solids was added to the tank containing the emulsion. A criticality excursion occurred immediately after starting the motor to a propeller type stirrer at the bottom of the second tank.
The operator fell from the low stepladder on which he was standing and stumbled out of the door into the snow. A second chemical operator in an adjoining room had seen a flash, which probably resulted from a short circuit when the motor to the stirrer started, and went to the man's assistance. The accident victim mumbled he felt as though he was burning up. Because of this, it was assumed that there had been a chemical accident with a probable acid or plutonium exposure. There was no realization that a criticality accident had occurred for a number of minutes. The quantity of plutonium which actually was present in the tank was about ten times more than was supposed to be there at any time during the procedure.
The employee died 35 hours later from the effects of a radiation exposure with the whole-body dose calculated to be 12,000 rem +.
Two other employees received radiation exposures of 134 and 53 rem, respectively. Property damage was negligible. (See TID-5360, Suppl 2, p. 30; USAEC Serious Accidents Issue #143, 1-22-59.)
I guess if I were ever to be the victim of Acute Radiation Syndrome I would want to go like the last guy. Not hanging around for a month or so of great pain and heroic lifesaving attempts and weeping relatives, but BANG and the next day you're dead. The link to the document is here:
http://www.ciar.org/~ttk/hew/accident/critical.htm
The moral of the story: Don't tickle the dragon's tail.
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