What Keeps Nuclear Weapons from Proliferating: The hardest step in making a nuclear bomb
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 чер 2012
- Bill explains that the hardest step is making the proper type of uranium. Weapons and power plants require uranium that contains a greater amount of the isotope uranium-235 than found in natural uranium, which is mostly uranium-238. He outlines the key difficulty in separating the two isotope: They have nearly identical properties. He explains the two key methods for separation: Gas diffusion and centrifuges.
- Наука та технологія
I just stumbled upon your channel. As a chemist, I never had much engineering in school and from watching a few of your videos, I have a lot more respect for the people who built the instruments I use every day. Separating two isotopes sounded fairly easy until I learned what sort of engineering is required to do so. I'm learning so much I just want to say thank you.
I've been watching your videos all morning. Can't wait to buy this book. You have an amazing way of explaining complex topics in a concise and understandable way - no small feat, to be sure. Thank you!
Thank you ... enjoy the book.
youre a great host and made this extremely interesting!
This video *IS* the bomb! Thank you for enriching my day.
During the Manhattan Project the gaseous diffusion process at K-25 was not very efficient. The slightly enriched uranium from K-25 was sent to Y-12. The calutrons at Y-12 used an electromagnetic process and were used to complete the enrichment process.
There is one other method of separation which doesn't rely on weight differences, but rather exploits the fantastically small differences in hyperfine transition energy of the isotopes. Very disturbingly, certain entities have recently discovered a method by which molecular uranium (235) hexafluoride gas can be selectively excited by using an exquisitely tuned carbon dioxide laser-pumped parahydrogen raman shifting technique. ...It is rumored to be 5x the efficiency of the Zippe centrifuges....
How do you know when you have enough U-235? Is the mass difference really enough to do volume/density calculations or would there be a more sophisticated method?
I knew about how they separated uranium 235 from 238, but I had no idea it required houndreds or thousands of repeats, a hugely interesting fact!
Wow these are some really high quality layman's term demonstrations. Awesome video!
Interesting, the process to enrich uranium isn't completely unlike the process to remove plasma from blood. The centrifuge device looks like a much larger version of the kind used at the plasma donation center where I used to work.
Just discovered your channel (because you commented in a brazilian video about the other line being faster) and I am amazed about the quality of every video. I don't know if you still do videos, but they are incredible. Thank you, from a new fan from Brazil.
Very well done, I knew vague details of what was involved in getting near-pure 235, but this was a great in-depth look.
Gotta go get that book now...
I am sure I've said this before but again thanks for subtitling these videos. Thumbs up.
These videos are perfect! No wonder I always get so happy when there's a new one :)
You call it a scale model of the first bomb ever used. Did you mean the first bomb used as a weapon? Otherwise, the first bomb used was the trinity test, which was a plutonium bomb as well.
I need to buy that book.
I was about to look up these details and saw your post.
I'm so excited, i actually understood this video the first time watching it!
You still have to enrich uranium to make fuel for a breeder reactor that makes plutonium.
So are these drums what Stuxnet targeted in the Iranian refineries?
I love these videos. It reminds me of the Eye Witness videos in grade school.
this is how to sell a book!
matched perfectly with my Nuclear Energy course of last semester. I'm studying engineering too :)
Another interesting video as always.
Very well explained!
Thanks to your video I passed my physic exam!Thanks :)
Amazing video, once again.
Loved it. lol at the title. The second half saved it though.
Can't wait to get to the new book, I'm still on the first one.
Your videos are great!
Wow, very interesting, once again; well done.
The big boy uranium was produced using gaseous diffusion, but the little boy's fuel was a cyclotron process using electromagnetic separation followed by conversion to plutonium. A uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki.
thank you~ I'll be waiting for it!!!
thanks for the clarification, i was just talking about the place that may get hit by nukes if things go wrong (as in the original post i was responding to).
individuals and countries have differing goals...I have close friends from india, pakistan, iran and more, and i worry how the posturing of leaders will affect them :(
Good video, very informative.
I'd be interested in learning how we're able to record sound (and maybe even play it back) Could you do a video on how microphones work? :)
the colors or the color distribution of the european map showed, was kinda ..interesting ^^ what were the initial purpose of the used map, if i may ask? :)
It might be, but such things as exact metal mixture for cylinder is a secret you can't get.
The knowledge in those books covers the basics, but not the key elements, which are strictly classified.
Damn, best channel on UA-cam.
I'm sure there must be a good reason they don't use just one centrifuge and run the gas through it over and over... but I'm not sure why. :P Do they get increasingly faster or slower? If not couldn't that still be done with one centrifuge? Maybe that would just take forever.
Great video though - maybe I'm just slow :P
Both Process' were used. There were numerous cyclotrons built first using silver from the federal reserve because copper was needed for ammo. Gaseous diffusion came much later once the membranes were perfected.
Great video! This could to explain to the average US Citizen (& congressman) why Iran's Nuclear Energy program can't easily/quickly be converted into a weapons grade U235 HEU program.I'm not sure how many times I hear US Reps spouting off that Iranian Scientists can "flip a switch" & start producing U235 practically overnight. I'm not saying the Iranians aren't but that going from 5% Low Grade to 90% high grade is a massive undertaking requiring tremendous energy-money-time
i love all your vídeos are awesome
@CipherSon I think you're referring to his comment about how slight defects make them spin to pieces? The Stuxnet bug infected the motor control mechanisms of the rotors causing them to malfunction and fail. It is noted at the first "public" governmentally sponsored cyber attack. Though no one claims responsibility... the speculation is fascinating.
Really interesting!
It's hard to listen to your amazing explanation and at the same time to read the somewhat long(er?) facts in the background. Otherwise, well done my friend.
University of Illinois +1 whoop!
Totally blew my mind.
Thanks for the correction, I misremembered Australia as being very inactive. However, large swaths of the inland are only low to moderately active (having recorded no M>5.0 quake in the last 100 years). The largest quakes in Australia are estimated to be up to around M7.0, something we can engineer around these days (like the Japanese do every day). Nevertheless, for practical purses, the closest sparsely populated low-activity areas outside would probably be Antarctica, NE China and Siberia.
awesome stuff
Very much enjoyed the explanations and video. I'm curious as to why you did not mention electromagnetic separation which was the primary process that "produced" the 235 for Little Boy.
It's a small atomic bomb surrounded by hydrogen.
The energy from the bomb delivered to the hydrogen triggers fusion (same thing that happens on the sun), which releases the enormous amounts of energy.
It might be classified, but the knowledge to construct one is out there. I have a book by Friedwardt Winterberg on the Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Devices.
it's common knowledge, doesn't make it easy to do without being spotted, the facilities are quite large.
What kind of material do we need to bombard U-2 with to split them?
No, only the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima used uranuim from gaseous diffusion. The Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki, and the first test device (the Gadget used in the Trinity test) were both more complex plutonium implosion devices.
Fat Man was a plutonium core implosion device. Little boy was used on the primary target as the gun type device while vastly less efficient was much more of a sure thing nuclear yield wise.
How fast are the rotors in a centrifuge spinning?
when you build an expensive toy designed to disintegrate a lot of people you want it fast not cheap. Plus there is a lot of material to separate so you want a process where all your resulting material are the same grade. If you have separate centrifuges you might get different resulting grad materials.
well, that escalated quickly
In the context of the war in the pacific, it is estimated that if the bombs weren't dropped causing the surrender of the Japanese the war would have continued for at least a year with even more casualties than the bombs caused. Let's also not forget the Japanese chose to enter the war with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I'm sorry that the war happened, but not so much for the bombs that ended it.
Best. Subscription. Ever.
I love the idea of tackling power grids and alternative energy.
There is so much false information thrown about by all parties involved that it becomes very difficult for us lay-people to know what to believe. Storing wind energy, connecting new energy to grids, fluctuating power costs between night and day, etc.
Would really love to see this dealt with.
Thanks for all the videos though. No matter what you pick, it'll still be interesting either way.
I have just sent Turkish translation.
Which can be extracted, of course, and more easily than from the oxide waste of Fast Breeder or Light Water Reactors.
where can i buy a nice scale model like that?
Can you do something about fusion?
I love this guy...
You demoralise a nation, you win. Fairly simple. If Mr.Japan on the front line finds out most of the people he knew has been turned to ash, why does he go on? He just lost anything he might have been fighting for.
Works great for me, every single time.
Hmmm, I see. Btw, love your videos.
Thanks for the link.
Still, do the USA or the other mentioned countries want to take the waste? I don't think Scandinavian countries want to take all the nuclear waste of Europe and nobody wants it transported passed their homes. They still chain themselves to the road when a transport is made in Germany.
I know some of the suggested solutions but if it really was that easy there'd be no discussion about it.
neet where can i get a model of this bomb ?
love it :)
What scale is that?
The first bombs were triggered by air pressure, since it was the only way to determine altitude in the bomb. They wanted to achieve an airburst for maximum killing potential, so it was set to explode 500 meters above the Japanese cities.
I might be wrong on this, but I believe that implosion bombs like Fat Man (the plutonium bomb dropped on Japan) are harder to manufacture for two reasons; The bomb itself is harder to make because it needs to be more precise (equal forse hitting it from every direction), and secondly weapons grade plutonium was harder to procure. This is why the Americans had never actually tested a plutonium implosion bomb before dropping it on Japan.
One word: Stuxnet.
i'm not saying that nuclear is the answer to everything. By recycling i mean, reused in the reactor as fuel. At least that's what our British reactors do.
just that people are too afraid of nuclear when it's way safer than what we already use for most of our energy generation.
May you please talk abut element 115 Ununpentium ;D
Just because we do it often doesn't mean it's either cheap or easy.
we really need more ppl like this on the dicovery channel XD
It's actually a good thing that is difficult
EngineerGuy and Smarter Every Day should collab...
I actually see the same out of sync issue over time. OSX Lion, Safari, HTML5 player.
Actually, the more you do something, generally speaking, the lower the cost and the better you get at doing it. We have been producing jet engines for many decades now, and we produce tens or hundreds of thousands more every year. By this point, it should be a pretty straightforward, relatively easy process to create things which spin at such high RPMs.
I'd like to have a nuclear powered microwave.
In all seriousness though I came from the atomic clock/gps one and expected to hear about how the gps network detects nuclear explosions.
Damnit Bill! You almost made me burn my chicken, stop being so interesting!
squashed between epicmealtime and secretagentbob, i feel smarter after watching this channel
I heard they are tearing down K-25 plant. They should allow us to visit the 40 acres plant...
try updating your browser and flash. will probably fix your problem.
Go Stuxnet!
I like the background music. It's quirky and appropriately unobtrusive.
Hey... that;s today!!!
The problem is less the possibility of the plant exploding but how to deal with the nuclear waste.
The public is scared about many eyed fishes and accidents like Fukushima but from a natural disaster standpoint nuclear powerplants produce horrible waste which is difficult to store because we can't simply destroy it. In Germany we have old salt mines but imagine an earthquake cracking them up and letting water in. The ground water would be contaminated with very long living waste products.
It's not solving the problem it's merely postponing it. And it's postponing the solution because funding is taken from finding it.
If you concentrate on easing the symptoms the illness doesn't get treated.
Actually they used 2 different methods for the bombs. Fat Man used plutonium and little boy used the uranium.
totally.
You got me on the reactor types. I had assumed that they branched from the fast breeder, but it turns out they're completely different. I should have done more research there.
Yeah, thorium has its issues, like anything else, but I do think the biggest issue is that it's been ignored. Nixon shut down all thorium nuclear research in favor of fast breeding, which produces more fissionable plutonium for weapons. Now, we want the opposite. It's only logical that we reinvestigate.
cool
I'm sure his scientists already know. Better to make sure we all understand it I think.