A whole new level of understatement. ;*[} 60 to 80 KILOGRAMS left over?? What bugs me is the millions of dollars those billets represent...finally, it looks like if your plutonium ignites you're basically screwed.....it even decomposed the freon extinguisher!
I'm pretty sure "don't try this at home" is the only unnecessary warning label on the planet. I do however highly recommended the oral consumption of gasoline.
Yes... I just happen to have 60-80 kg of weapons grade plutonium at home...shhhh, don't tell anyone! PS: This is one material that NEVER, EVER... DO N0T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.... POUR WATER ON IT! [because the water can act as a moderator and cause a criticality incident....]
It's rare to find pictures of plutonium in quantity. And here we see a 2kg puck burning. Amazing stuff. It brings into perspective that even Plutonium is "just" a material. Nothing magical about it. You just need a lab the size of a city to handle it. And tuna cans.
And at millions per gram you also need a train full of large bills for a small test. And another train load to clean up. Then 9 more trian loads to store the mess.
@@tireballastserviceofflorid7771 it would take a lifetime to find what redtape you through after you find the agencies you did know existed[SOOOOOOO MANY]. then before you can purchase it. arrested as terrorist. and your dog executed. cops love to do that. #puppycide thefreethoughtproject
I find it way more interesting than most materials. It has 7 different allotropes, all with different metallurgical qualities (which is why it's so difficult to machine) It's super heavy, pyrophoric, radioactive. And completely man made on earth.
@@tireballastserviceofflorid7771 I am sure after burning it every single bit of that smoke Pu oxide smoke and ash was condensed and collected to be made into metal again.
Can't thank you enough for posting this video. Truly amazing and educational. I'll always keep some magnesium oxide in my house in case my plutonium catches fire.
Any metal fire is scary enough but a metal that emits strong ionizing radiation? Still, many would say they'd rather play with plutonium isotopes than explore the "interesting" avenues of fluorine chemistry.
@@wolu9456 That part became a superfund site and we spent a fortune managing all the contaminated substances. Or in the USSR, they dumped all that crap, including the waste fission products, into a big holding tank, where the fission products provided a steady heat source, and wouldn't you know, once it boiled dry, the nitric acid plus a few other chemicals, under high temperature, form ammonium nitrate. They were doing this on the scale of many tons, and yeah, they triggered a ~100 ton convention explosion of ammonium nitrate, which, fine, that's not a big deal, but it's dispersing radioactive fission products all over the place. That area is now a "national park", off limits to the public -- see "Kyshtym disaster".
This hits home for me. I've visited a vacuum lathe used for designing warheads. The question of handling the turnings has always been a question in my mind. This example was what I was thinking might be a possible outcome.
The chuck is coupled by a magnetic clutch into an argon filled glove box. Relatively normal tools are used for machining. Chips are sucked into a special criticality safe vacuum cleaner with a built-in neutron detector with the HEPA filter recirculating the argon inside. The whole machining center is at a slightly negative pressure relative to atmosphere.
@@christopherleubner6633 thanks for a more thorough explanation of the equipment I saw. I was shown that lathe while I was in the lab. I didn't see it in operation but a simplified explanation was given to me at the time. There was, at the time a lot of security about certain processes being performed there.
Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant where 2 of the worst and most expensive industrial fires in the USA occured ,..... 1957 and the 1969 Mother's Day Fire were the result of Plutonium scraps and shavings spontaneously igniting and spreading from 1 glove box to another ! All the various machining and casting operations had cans of oil to extinguish any Plutonium fires that started by smothering the Plutonium and omitting the oxygen . Later, fire sensors were installed in the glove boxes on Plutonium stored in Benelex plastic enclosures as a fire prevention measure . However, production was slowed and workers blocked the fire sensors to speed up production . The resulting fire nearly took out the roof of the building which would have spread Plutonium easily to Denver and beyond ! Watch video ,.... " Secrets of a Bomb Factory " also analysis of the Rocky Flats Fires !
This is truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen! Because of contradictory to popular believe, seeing plutonium behaving so gentile like this is far off from what everyone would tell you! Thank you very much for sharing this with the scientific community! 🙏😃
Why do you assume the burning of plutonium would be some violent event? 🤦♂️ This is a *chemical* reaction, simple oxidation. A quick look at the periodic table indicates it is not the most reactive metal in the universe. This is about what I expected to see. Only real issue with this I have is the quality of the video but like dude said, it isn't something they just do for the hell of it. The stuff is incredibly expensive to obtain.
WRONG ! News Flash,..... dateline, 1957, .... Plutonium fire at Rocky Flats Weapons Plant ! News Flash,...... dateline 1969,..... Mother's Day ,.... Plutonium fire again at Rocky Flats Weapons Plant ! Resulting in the MOST EXPENSIVE INDUSTRIAL FIRE IN U.S. HISTORY ! The plutonium is PYROPHORIC and can ignite spontaneously even inside the glove boxes which is what happened from the scraps inside a glove box of the Plutonium Fabrication Bldg. The fires were so intense that the use of water was a last resort since water is NEVER used because it moderates the neutron reaction and can cause a CRITICALITY EVENT ! Read the book, " ATOMIC ACCIDENTS" and learn how many times CRITICALITY EVENTS happened by accident,... killing many people !
@@MadScientist267Video quality is due to degradation, possibly radiation fogging of the film! This was shot in 1966, and edited into this film in 1967!
The amazing thing about this video is the primitive apparatus used for the test. Just gonna put 2 kilos of Plutonium on this fire proof sheet and put a ring around it 'for safety reasons', then set it on fire and see if we have anything that will put out the fire. Very smart people were doing this, but it still sounds like Homer Simpson class nuclear research.
@Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus Actually I agree with the foul mouthed one. $4 million dollars per pound to make not inclusive of manufacturing facility set up cost or the life cost/ damage radioactive pollution has done to humankind and everything else it destroys. We shouldn't have created this stuff, or been setting 80kg of it on fire in a lab...... I think Mr potty mouth could not have been more concise and there is actually an argument in their statement. Just not a fancy one with big words.
The title of this is old-school science horror. The thought of burning plutonium is nightmarish. I really like that you narrated it with first-hand knowledge of what was happening and gave perspective, its probably the only safety video I'd recommend to my friends, lol. I forwarded it to a few friends that are firefighters. I got here thanks to @RadioactiveDrew.
You can simulate the plutonium burning with a metal called cerium. Was rather surprised they tried halon as it is a major NO-NO to use it on any kind of burning reactive metal. Cerium is the metal that gives cigarette lighters their ignition sparks, to see how a plutonium fire would burn heat a cigarette lighter flint till it ignites and drop it on concrete. 😲 If you disturb a burning plutonium fire, it will burn more violently. Argon gas is used to fill gloveboxes for machining the stuff. An emergency back up extiguishing media of a glassy sand that forms a low melting eutectic crust or a metal alloy powder is also available. 🤓
These were very costly experiments. The Pu was designated for recovery and would have been oxidized anyway. The experiments we are watching would have been highly classified. There concerns at the time may have been more about fire and material containment than extinguishment. These studies probably helped establish dry-box and other containment enclosure limits for Pu fire control. I would have liked to watch the same experiments with Thorium, which gives off the most beautiful blue hue when burning, but would have burned through the stainless dry-box bottom in a split second.
This great stuff thanks for putting it on here for everyone to see its good info an thats probably sumones gradpa ,dad, uncle an they can all ways hear him narrating a great video 👍👍👍👍
cat637d Yes, I believe Felt is still around. This video was almost lost from the archives forever. The last known VHS copy belonged to Felt so we asked his son to make us a copy. He subsequently sent us a DVD, which after getting Felt's permission, I then uploaded to UA-cam to give back to the scientific community.
Hmmm...Rocky Flats had some horrific plutonium fires that were very hard to extinguish. Machine turnings in large amounts once burning just dont go out. Water will actually accelerate the fire.
So this is why my friend from Los Alamos told me they had buckets of mag oxide sand in many of the labs he serviced as a maintenance technician. Told some crazy stories about having to fix a mill mid operation. Said you had to dress in secret clothing and spend minutes working max. He lost his nerve after seeing many friends with cancer. I wonder how much radiation is released during the fire. And at what oxidation state does the plutonium end up at? Can the metal be recovered still? Very interesting.
Mixed oxidation states, it pretends to be 3 and 5 plus iirc. Yup they are very funny about some types of research, and they like to compartmentalize it. Hence you may have a q for something but not for another project on site. Also the person doing the machining and the maintenance have no idea what the part is for. Plutonium is used for all kinds of research ranging from neutron sources to acellerator targets to nukes to special reactors and thermal batteries for space and deep sea stuff. Machined Plutonium is usually for variants of nuclear weapons parts or precision (micro scale) reactor parts.
@christopherleubner6633 Back, when my friend was working there, The US was in full nuke production and still doing underground testing. I'm guessing the labs are doing much different stuff now.
Chemical reactions do not interfere with ionizing radiation which is something that happens in the nucleus of an atom. The amount released would be the same if the lump did not burn and can be precisely calculated.
Excellent analogy. Pu mostly burns like charcoal. If you use Pu238, it generates enough heat from radioactive decay to power satellites. No combustion needed!
The "Demon core" plutonium sphere was a different kettle of fish to these experiments. The one thing they have in common, material aside, is that these were days of pioneering fissile material science and really they were just given a brief on what the scientific/military/government brass wanted to know and left to play with things how they saw fit.
It wasn't especially dangerous just sitting around. Arranging experiments capable of causing criticality where a human was the only "safety" control? That is scary.
@@hopefilledsinner3911 You are making stuff up. These are closed circulation systems with dense mechanical and chemical filters. There is nothing criminal about using plutonium outside warfare.
No, those elements are almost perfectly inert. They only form molecules at highly excited states. They would smother the fire and they are used in gloveboxes to prevent fires.
Oh geez...well you don't often see Halon being so desperately ineffective... Anyway, so we weren't quite successful in extinguishing Pu fire with pretty much anything except Mg sand ? I mean as far as the practical application is concerned. The only thing that I would like to know more now...well theee...Extinguishing Characteristics of Critical Plutonium Metal Fires.
Does this mean pushing the metal into a confined space, made of steel will help extinguish a plutonium fire? For instance, a long narrow steel container, which can reduce the area of sinter, while giving maximum area for heat dissipation? This was really fascinating.
NO !!!! The LAST THING you would ever want to do is to re-combine any Plutonium into a pile as it could cause a CRITICALITY EVENT ! Thats why the shape of finished Plutonium, even castings are only half round and NEVER brought together ! The shape of a TOMATO can, is a formula for catastrophe, or a ball shape ! Read about the 1969 Mother's Day Fire at Rocky Flats ! To get more perspective on how Plutonium works, read the book, " ATOMIC ACCIDENTS " !
I can't even imagine how dangerous these tests were to perform. What do you do with the glove, and powder, and everything that touched the plutonium? That stuff has to be highly radioactive; you can't just put that in the trash bin
I was working at Los Alamos at the time. The report was easy to find, but the video was MIA. Someone in the group still had connections with Mr Felt and his son was kind enough to send us a digital copy. He also gave us permission to post it on UA-cam. This is a very important video for anyone working with Pu and similar combustible metals. It also helps workers get an appreciation for how they respond in a fire - paramount for anyone in the fire service potentially responding to a Pu Fire. Unfortunately, there are many extinguishing agents available for use in today's market that were unavailable at the time this research was completed. I'm trying to get more agents tested so we can use the best available in our nuclear facilities utilizing Pu, but as one can imagine, this is a difficult proposition...
I saw a video of someone burning a google nest speaker it burns the same way and is indestructible? They wanted to see what was in side of it? crazy right! Can't find that video anymore!
Is this guy okay? He keeps mixing up his words lol. He calls it Halon 1301 and then just goes to calling it freon... He also keeps coughing directly into the microphone. Ah the 60s, a time of science.
It can be pyrophoric, depending on the specific surface area of the material. All elemental metals are pyrophoric, it's just that some require a higher surface area to volume ratio. At the fundamental level, it's a matter of reaction/oxidation rate, energy absorption into the material, and diffusion into the environment.
It's more likely to be related to the 1957 Rocky Flats fire in the US than the Windscale fire in the UK. The former were plutonium shavings fires in gloveboxes, whereas the latter was a uranium/graphite fire in a reactor. (Also, he says in the very beginning this is research conducted at the Hanford site, which is in the US.)
It's unlikely. As Pu oxidizes it expands. Pu Oxide is very fluffy and light and doesnt lend to becoming a criticalicality favorable geometry. The Rocky Flats fire of 69 is a testament to how difficult it is to accidentally create a crit scenario when fighting a Pu fire with water.
@@calibob2001 WRONG ! After the fire fighters used up all the CO2 and chemical extinguishers in their attempt to put out the Plutonium fire, their only choice was now WATER ! HOWEVER ,... they were very careful NOT to use a heavy jet stream but rather a fogging shower spray and never to push any Plutonium into a large pile for fear of a Criticality Event ! Water will MODERATE the neutrons and allow for chain reactions, just like in a WATER MODERATED REACTOR !
Using graphite powder to put out a Plutonium fire requires balls of steel. Graphite is a moderator, meaning that it significantly reduces the critical mass. If you aren't sure about how much Plutonium is burning, and you pour graphite on it, you could end up with something that makes you forget all about that little fire. Then your hair falls out.
Turning Plutonium on a lathe would likely leave fine shavings and the heat generated from frictional resistance I would think could ignite Plutonium. In these tests it would seem would endanger workers exposed to the Plutonium and its gaseous oxides.
It is turned in lathe that is in a glove box with a magnetic clutch from the machine motor itself. The glove box is filled with argon or nitrogen, though sometimes helium is used. The stuff machines very similar to gummy aluminum alloys, but if you tried machining in air it will burn like ferrocerium shavings. This would be very very bad.
I saw an old training film by Dupont, the people who first made Halon. They actually called it Freon 1301. Maybe they changed the name for copyright reasons.
Kids in a shop... playing with whatever is laying around. Copper turnings , Iron filings , graphite powder. .. after that initial scientific burn the" whoa that's cool "switch was flipped and the flood gates open . . I guess I would be doing the same, where and when will this ever happen again was probably the thought. .
"after that initial scientific burn" Uh, they were _all_ scientific burns! The materials chosen weren't "whatever is laying around", they were selected as theoretically valid extinguishing agents. People who were "playing" with plutonium often didn't fare well, particularly in a configuration prone to a prompt criticality.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 After the Demon Core claimed its second victim, they banned playing with those things by hand. All experiments had to be remotely controlled.
@@josephastier7421 Criticality can occur only with critical mass involved. There is no remote control practice with most subcritical manipulations. People normally work with plutonium compounds in gloveboxes.
what gases are given off? did plutonium go into the atmosphere? what is the price of plutonium? I would imagine a heap of money was spent on this material...........
No gases are given off. No, it was done in a glovebox, *obviously* . Several thousands of dollars per gramme. You do understand atoms are not destroyed when things are burned, right?
Plutonium can react with nitrogen to produce plutonium(III) nitride. This reaction takes place at a temperatures near 1000°C. The Atomic Energy Comission (predecessor to Department of Energy) did testing of liquid nitrogen on burning metals in 1972 and found it to be effective in certain situations, so it's very likely that the cooling effect of liquid nitrogen would overwhelm the sustained exothermic reaction of the plutonium. Apart from encapsulating the plutonium to stop it from reacting, cooling is the most effective way to extinguish a burning plutonium fire.
@@calibob2001 What atmosphere is in the glove boxes during normal use? 1000°C is well below the melting points of common stainless steel alloys: www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=103
It's said, that when machinists had been given pieces of uranium for the first atom bombs, some of the swarf wouldn't come back as demanded. Turns out that they were turning the material into flints for lighters due to a cerium shortage. 😂
People do not appreciate the power of oxygen......That plutonium "burns" is not so much due to the reactivity of the metal, but rather the high electronegativity of oxygen.....which is even more reactive than chlorine!!! I am far more frightened by oxygen than plutonium.
Holy balls , this whole experiment looks so sketchy, start off by burning 2 kg of plutonium! wow that's a lot of waste disposal right there. Then there's the guy picking up bits of burning plutonium, yikes! But it's all ok, we've nearly figured out a way to put it out, and it's fine stored in tuna cans ffs!
Gather the oxide and nitride and recycle them back. You do understand this element is expensive, useful and guarded, right? And you just think it would be dumped somewhere? :facepalm:
This video brings "Don't try this at home" to a whole new energy level.
Wouldn’t have to warn about that until the day you start seeing cheap chinese grade Plutonium sold on the trans uranium elements shelves at Walmart
A whole new level of understatement. ;*[}
60 to 80 KILOGRAMS left over??
What bugs me is the millions of dollars those billets represent...finally, it looks like if your plutonium ignites you're basically screwed.....it even decomposed the freon extinguisher!
I'm pretty sure "don't try this at home" is the only unnecessary warning label on the planet.
I do however highly recommended the oral consumption of gasoline.
Yes... I just happen to have 60-80 kg of weapons grade plutonium at home...shhhh, don't tell anyone!
PS: This is one material that NEVER, EVER... DO N0T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.... POUR WATER ON IT! [because the water can act as a moderator and cause a criticality incident....]
It's rare to find pictures of plutonium in quantity. And here we see a 2kg puck burning. Amazing stuff. It brings into perspective that even Plutonium is "just" a material. Nothing magical about it. You just need a lab the size of a city to handle it. And tuna cans.
And at millions per gram you also need a train full of large bills for a small test. And another train load to clean up. Then 9 more trian loads to store the mess.
Isn't that 1/4 needed for a critical mass?
@@tireballastserviceofflorid7771 it would take a lifetime to find what redtape you through
after you find the agencies you did know existed[SOOOOOOO MANY].
then before you can purchase it.
arrested as terrorist. and your dog executed.
cops love to do that. #puppycide
thefreethoughtproject
I find it way more interesting than most materials. It has 7 different allotropes, all with different metallurgical qualities (which is why it's so difficult to machine) It's super heavy, pyrophoric, radioactive. And completely man made on earth.
@@tireballastserviceofflorid7771 I am sure after burning it every single bit of that smoke Pu oxide smoke and ash was condensed and collected to be made into metal again.
Can't thank you enough for posting this video. Truly amazing and educational.
I'll always keep some magnesium oxide in my house in case my plutonium catches fire.
Key learning: tuna fish cans used to be much bigger.
Noted, will not store PU in glovebox of car, unless in a can.
I hate it when I reach for a map and grab uranium in my glove box.
I feel irradiated just seeing this footage
lets be honest guys ... we all did not search for this but hey ... it was very interesting. see you here again in 5 years ✌️✌️✌️
We can see who's left alive!
Plutonium fire, because plain old plutonium wasn't scary enough.....
Any metal fire is scary enough but a metal that emits strong ionizing radiation?
Still, many would say they'd rather play with plutonium isotopes than explore the "interesting" avenues of fluorine chemistry.
Very useful video in case I ever come in contact with 2kg piece of burning plutonium.
If I wasn't on a watch list I am now.
I'm trying not the think about how much highly toxic/radioactive waste this was creating, where it went, and how much this little experiment cost.
I have always been curious about how scientists determined how to create and store such dangerous material. This is fascinating.
it'sthe waste acids and gasses i'm curious about
@@wolu9456 That part became a superfund site and we spent a fortune managing all the contaminated substances. Or in the USSR, they dumped all that crap, including the waste fission products, into a big holding tank, where the fission products provided a steady heat source, and wouldn't you know, once it boiled dry, the nitric acid plus a few other chemicals, under high temperature, form ammonium nitrate. They were doing this on the scale of many tons, and yeah, they triggered a ~100 ton convention explosion of ammonium nitrate, which, fine, that's not a big deal, but it's dispersing radioactive fission products all over the place. That area is now a "national park", off limits to the public -- see "Kyshtym disaster".
This hits home for me. I've visited a vacuum lathe used for designing warheads. The question of handling the turnings has always been a question in my mind. This example was what I was thinking might be a possible outcome.
talk about not knowing what "hit's home" means 😂
ADA165790.pdf
google it
The chuck is coupled by a magnetic clutch into an argon filled glove box. Relatively normal tools are used for machining. Chips are sucked into a special criticality safe vacuum cleaner with a built-in neutron detector with the HEPA filter recirculating the argon inside. The whole machining center is at a slightly negative pressure relative to atmosphere.
@@christopherleubner6633 thanks for a more thorough explanation of the equipment I saw. I was shown that lathe while I was in the lab. I didn't see it in operation but a simplified explanation was given to me at the time. There was, at the time a lot of security about certain processes being performed there.
Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant where 2 of the worst and most expensive industrial fires in the USA occured ,..... 1957 and the 1969 Mother's Day Fire were the result of Plutonium scraps and shavings spontaneously igniting and spreading from 1 glove box to another ! All the various machining and casting operations had cans of oil to extinguish any Plutonium fires that started by smothering the Plutonium and omitting the oxygen . Later, fire sensors were installed in the glove boxes on Plutonium stored in Benelex plastic enclosures as a fire prevention measure . However, production was slowed and workers blocked the fire sensors to speed up production . The resulting fire nearly took out the roof of the building which would have spread Plutonium easily to Denver and beyond ! Watch video ,.... " Secrets of a Bomb Factory " also analysis of the Rocky Flats Fires !
Thanks for sharing this. Plutonium is one strange and scary beast! What a cool research project.
Thanks for posting this Rob!
We should add a link in the description to the report on this experiment.
Plutonium spontaneously ignites in air. If it feels like it. Not always. Just when it's pissed off. 👍
This is truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen!
Because of contradictory to popular believe, seeing plutonium behaving so gentile like this is far off from what everyone would tell you! Thank you very much for sharing this with the scientific community!
🙏😃
Why do you assume the burning of plutonium would be some violent event? 🤦♂️
This is a *chemical* reaction, simple oxidation. A quick look at the periodic table indicates it is not the most reactive metal in the universe. This is about what I expected to see.
Only real issue with this I have is the quality of the video but like dude said, it isn't something they just do for the hell of it. The stuff is incredibly expensive to obtain.
WRONG ! News Flash,..... dateline, 1957, .... Plutonium fire at Rocky Flats Weapons Plant ! News Flash,...... dateline 1969,..... Mother's Day ,.... Plutonium fire again at Rocky Flats Weapons Plant ! Resulting in the MOST EXPENSIVE INDUSTRIAL FIRE IN U.S. HISTORY ! The plutonium is PYROPHORIC and can ignite spontaneously even inside the glove boxes which is what happened from the scraps inside a glove box of the Plutonium Fabrication Bldg. The fires were so intense that the use of water was a last resort since water is NEVER used because it moderates the neutron reaction and can cause a CRITICALITY EVENT ! Read the book, " ATOMIC ACCIDENTS" and learn how many times CRITICALITY EVENTS happened by accident,... killing many people !
@@MadScientist267Video quality is due to degradation, possibly radiation fogging of the film! This was shot in 1966, and edited into this film in 1967!
@@richardmccann4815 You don't say... 🤔
The amazing thing about this video is the primitive apparatus used for the test. Just gonna put 2 kilos of Plutonium on this fire proof sheet and put a ring around it 'for safety reasons', then set it on fire and see if we have anything that will put out the fire.
Very smart people were doing this, but it still sounds like Homer Simpson class nuclear research.
@Be Skeptical Of Everything that’s not true, it is always radioactive. I when it’s critical it begins releasing gamma rays
@@rainman2222
Plutonium releases gamma when sub critical, just at a much lower rate.
@Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus Actually I agree with the foul mouthed one. $4 million dollars per pound to make not inclusive of manufacturing facility set up cost or the life cost/ damage radioactive pollution has done to humankind and everything else it destroys. We shouldn't have created this stuff, or been setting 80kg of it on fire in a lab......
I think Mr potty mouth could not have been more concise and there is actually an argument in their statement. Just not a fancy one with big words.
@Drew Smith Very straight to the point argument. 👌
The title of this is old-school science horror. The thought of burning plutonium is nightmarish.
I really like that you narrated it with first-hand knowledge of what was happening and gave perspective, its probably the only safety video I'd recommend to my friends, lol. I forwarded it to a few friends that are firefighters.
I got here thanks to @RadioactiveDrew.
Absolutely fascinating.
You can simulate the plutonium burning with a metal called cerium. Was rather surprised they tried halon as it is a major NO-NO to use it on any kind of burning reactive metal. Cerium is the metal that gives cigarette lighters their ignition sparks, to see how a plutonium fire would burn heat a cigarette lighter flint till it ignites and drop it on concrete. 😲 If you disturb a burning plutonium fire, it will burn more violently. Argon gas is used to fill gloveboxes for machining the stuff. An emergency back up extiguishing media of a glassy sand that forms a low melting eutectic crust or a metal alloy powder is also available. 🤓
These were very costly experiments. The Pu was designated for recovery and would have been oxidized anyway. The experiments we are watching would have been highly classified. There concerns at the time may have been more about fire and material containment than extinguishment. These studies probably helped establish dry-box and other containment enclosure limits for Pu fire control. I would have liked to watch the same experiments with Thorium, which gives off the most beautiful blue hue when burning, but would have burned through the stainless dry-box bottom in a split second.
How hot does thorium burn?
This great stuff thanks for putting it on here for everyone to see its good info an thats probably sumones gradpa ,dad, uncle an they can all ways hear him narrating a great video 👍👍👍👍
This documentation is AMAZING. Is Dr. Felt still living, he seems to be a brilliant and interesting man.
cat637d Yes, I believe Felt is still around. This video was almost lost from the archives forever. The last known VHS copy belonged to Felt so we asked his son to make us a copy. He subsequently sent us a DVD, which after getting Felt's permission, I then uploaded to UA-cam to give back to the scientific community.
@@calibob2001 Thank you.
Thank you so very much.
@@calibob2001 Thank you !
This is what happened at Rocky Flats twice
Hmmm...Rocky Flats had some horrific plutonium fires that were very hard to extinguish. Machine turnings in large amounts once burning just dont go out. Water will actually accelerate the fire.
AND moderate the neutrons. A HUGE NO-NO😮
So this is why my friend from Los Alamos told me they had buckets of mag oxide sand in many of the labs he serviced as a maintenance technician. Told some crazy stories about having to fix a mill mid operation. Said you had to dress in secret clothing and spend minutes working max. He lost his nerve after seeing many friends with cancer. I wonder how much radiation is released during the fire. And at what oxidation state does the plutonium end up at? Can the metal be recovered still? Very interesting.
Mixed oxidation states, it pretends to be 3 and 5 plus iirc. Yup they are very funny about some types of research, and they like to compartmentalize it. Hence you may have a q for something but not for another project on site. Also the person doing the machining and the maintenance have no idea what the part is for. Plutonium is used for all kinds of research ranging from neutron sources to acellerator targets to nukes to special reactors and thermal batteries for space and deep sea stuff. Machined Plutonium is usually for variants of nuclear weapons parts or precision (micro scale) reactor parts.
@christopherleubner6633 Back, when my friend was working there, The US was in full nuke production and still doing underground testing. I'm guessing the labs are doing much different stuff now.
Chemical reactions do not interfere with ionizing radiation which is something that happens in the nucleus of an atom.
The amount released would be the same if the lump did not burn and can be precisely calculated.
Thanks for the information. I hope it is never needed.
well they had metal fires in the cooling pools at fukushima burning for months not that long ago.
@@EFCasual No, there weren't such things. Stop making lies.
So interesting! Thank you!!
Imagine using plutonium buttons as brickettes in an actual BBQ! Atomic steak!
Excellent analogy. Pu mostly burns like charcoal. If you use Pu238, it generates enough heat from radioactive decay to power satellites. No combustion needed!
I would like my steak medium radiated please
actually its more poisenous than radioactive. ;)
@@VolksTriebjust need to get enough together to reach criticality, then try cooking with it!
I thank the video also deserves more credit than it's got 👍👍👍
the demon core..... i can't imagine how nervous people would have been going anyway near that thing
The "Demon core" plutonium sphere was a different kettle of fish to these experiments.
The one thing they have in common, material aside, is that these were days of pioneering fissile material science and really they were just given a brief on what the scientific/military/government brass wanted to know and left to play with things how they saw fit.
It wasn't especially dangerous just sitting around. Arranging experiments capable of causing criticality where a human was the only "safety" control? That is scary.
If Halon 1301 was more reactive than acting as a smothering agent, was something less reactive like nitrogen, or CO2 tested?
How good would it be to be a scientist in the old days? "oh you fucked around for an afternoon? Have an article in Nature"
Thanks rob very informative
Great video 👍
Good Grief! I hope those fume-hoods weren't vented to the outside!
A little radioactive fumes are good for you. Helps prevent cancer. :P
They would have been vented outside after passing through filters. We should have stopped using this stuff to this extent 40 years ago. Its criminal.
Nothing wrong with a little friendly cancer.
Plutonium helps "soften" the tumor and render it less noticeable.
@@hopefilledsinner3911 You are making stuff up. These are closed circulation systems with dense mechanical and chemical filters.
There is nothing criminal about using plutonium outside warfare.
@@hopefilledsinner3911waaah cry more.
Fascinating.
I wonder why something like a flow of cold argon or helium wasn't tried. Will these readily react with burning plutonium?
No, those elements are almost perfectly inert. They only form molecules at highly excited states. They would smother the fire and they are used in gloveboxes to prevent fires.
Oh geez...well you don't often see Halon being so desperately ineffective... Anyway, so we weren't quite successful in extinguishing Pu fire with pretty much anything except Mg sand ? I mean as far as the practical application is concerned.
The only thing that I would like to know more now...well theee...Extinguishing Characteristics of Critical Plutonium Metal Fires.
were there any releases? was the person conducting the experiment okay?
It was controlled in a glove box with ventilation. the gloves worn were probably asbestos coated.
He survived, but suffered from stupidity for the rest of his life.
Thank you for sharing this Rob! I wonder what would happen if inert gasses were used to starve it of O2 such as Helium or Nitrogen?
Apart from instances like these experiments, Plutonium and Uranium are always kept under inert gas environments. Certainly in the UK anyway.
Joe "I've got plutonium in my glovebox" Rogan
Does this mean pushing the metal into a confined space, made of steel will help extinguish a plutonium fire? For instance, a long narrow steel container, which can reduce the area of sinter, while giving maximum area for heat dissipation? This was really fascinating.
NO !!!! The LAST THING you would ever want to do is to re-combine any Plutonium into a pile as it could cause a CRITICALITY EVENT ! Thats why the shape of finished Plutonium, even castings are only half round and NEVER brought together ! The shape of a TOMATO can, is a formula for catastrophe, or a ball shape ! Read about the 1969 Mother's Day Fire at Rocky Flats ! To get more perspective on how Plutonium works, read the book, " ATOMIC ACCIDENTS " !
Can you extinguish the coal fire beneath Centralia Penn ?
I store my plutonium in old Starkist Tuna cans.
If only we had a way to remove this dangerous oxidising agent from the air! We could cease living in fear of combustion, in an oxygen-free atmosphere.
You store yours in tuna cans? So do they!
Sorry Charlie
I think this is a Neil Breen joke...
why do they have oxygen in the glovebox in the first place
For the experiment. The boxes usualy have nitrogen atmosphere.
Expansion during oxidation would burst containment vessel being a primary concern.
Thank you.
I can't even imagine how dangerous these tests were to perform. What do you do with the glove, and powder, and everything that touched the plutonium? That stuff has to be highly radioactive; you can't just put that in the trash bin
one thing for sure is that the fire continued to burn....
Thanks for posting.
This is a fantastic bit of history.
Where did you find this film and are there any others?
Regards
I was working at Los Alamos at the time. The report was easy to find, but the video was MIA. Someone in the group still had connections with Mr Felt and his son was kind enough to send us a digital copy. He also gave us permission to post it on UA-cam. This is a very important video for anyone working with Pu and similar combustible metals. It also helps workers get an appreciation for how they respond in a fire - paramount for anyone in the fire service potentially responding to a Pu Fire. Unfortunately, there are many extinguishing agents available for use in today's market that were unavailable at the time this research was completed. I'm trying to get more agents tested so we can use the best available in our nuclear facilities utilizing Pu, but as one can imagine, this is a difficult proposition...
@@calibob2001 tx
Firefighters HATE this one weird trick!
I saw a video of someone burning a google nest speaker it burns the same way and is indestructible? They wanted to see what was in side of it? crazy right! Can't find that video anymore!
This is relevant to my interests 😶
Is this guy okay? He keeps mixing up his words lol. He calls it Halon 1301 and then just goes to calling it freon...
He also keeps coughing directly into the microphone.
Ah the 60s, a time of science.
This was the 60s, he was probably smoking cigarettes in his office while doing the commentary.
@@nyhammer1 The commentary is recent if you haven't noticed or read the description.
So what I gather from this is, plutonium fire is impossible to extinguish.
isn't plutonium a pyrophoric metal (MEANING IT IGNITES UPON CONTACT WITH AIR)?
It can be pyrophoric, depending on the specific surface area of the material. All elemental metals are pyrophoric, it's just that some require a higher surface area to volume ratio. At the fundamental level, it's a matter of reaction/oxidation rate, energy absorption into the material, and diffusion into the environment.
@@calibob2001 I sincerely doubt gold is pyrophoric no matter how finely divided it is. Same for any other noble metal.
@@apathyboy that is actually incorrect. Iridium which is a platinum group metal can produce shavings that will ignite when exposed to air.
@@calibob2001if a metal doesn't readily form oxides it will not be pyrophoric, so no, not all elemental metals are pyrophoric.
Hmmm I wonder what event could possibly have motivated the Brits to look into extinguishing a molten radioisotope metal fire 🤔
A safety concern I expect. If the stuff needs to be used, I suppose it would be a good thing to know how to put out a fire if that can occur...
It's more likely to be related to the 1957 Rocky Flats fire in the US than the Windscale fire in the UK. The former were plutonium shavings fires in gloveboxes, whereas the latter was a uranium/graphite fire in a reactor.
(Also, he says in the very beginning this is research conducted at the Hanford site, which is in the US.)
@@piranha031091 Precisely! 👍
If you used graphite to try and smother a Pu fire, would this risk causing a criticality accident?
It's unlikely. As Pu oxidizes it expands. Pu Oxide is very fluffy and light and doesnt lend to becoming a criticalicality favorable geometry. The Rocky Flats fire of 69 is a testament to how difficult it is to accidentally create a crit scenario when fighting a Pu fire with water.
@@calibob2001 What's the melting point of Pu, I imagine liquid Pu to be quite angry ?
@@calibob2001 WRONG ! After the fire fighters used up all the CO2 and chemical extinguishers in their attempt to put out the Plutonium fire, their only choice was now WATER ! HOWEVER ,... they were very careful NOT to use a heavy jet stream but rather a fogging shower spray and never to push any Plutonium into a large pile for fear of a Criticality Event ! Water will MODERATE the neutrons and allow for chain reactions, just like in a WATER MODERATED REACTOR !
Using graphite powder to put out a Plutonium fire requires balls of steel. Graphite is a moderator, meaning that it significantly reduces the critical mass. If you aren't sure about how much Plutonium is burning, and you pour graphite on it, you could end up with something that makes you forget all about that little fire. Then your hair falls out.
Abc if fire - fuel, oxygen, ignition. Smothering with filings or powder isn't smothered because of the air between particles.
What were the risks of causing a criticality incident?
Turning Plutonium on a lathe would likely leave fine shavings and the heat generated from frictional resistance I would think could ignite Plutonium.
In these tests it would seem would endanger workers exposed to the Plutonium and its gaseous oxides.
The lathe would likely be contained in an atmosphere of hydrogen to preclude spontaneous ignition of the Pu.
@Drew Smith Gotcha. Appreciate it.👍
It is turned in lathe that is in a glove box with a magnetic clutch from the machine motor itself. The glove box is filled with argon or nitrogen, though sometimes helium is used. The stuff machines very similar to gummy aluminum alloys, but if you tried machining in air it will burn like ferrocerium shavings. This would be very very bad.
What a beautiful blue-black oxide. I bet it’s sooooo toxic though 😨
makes great bullets!
"Plutonium in depleted uranium penetrators"
The fuck you talking bout son
I wouldnt wanna be the person using a blow torch on solid plutonium
This is what many countries do.IAEA called on Iran to burn 300 kilograms of its plutonium reserves
12:29 he meant *Halon* 1301
Ah good spot, was just about to pose that question.
I saw an old training film by Dupont, the people who first made Halon. They actually called it Freon 1301. Maybe they changed the name for copyright reasons.
supersafe to handle molten plutonium with gloves it seems!
No way I'm putting *my* hands in those gloves!
4 million per kg...pretty pricey test
You can get it a lot cheaper on eBay.
Pretty important though
How much radiation is being released as this progressed.
See a hand in there applying these materials to the burning plutonium.
I think those gloves have a thick lead layer around it.
Ionizing radiation is not affected by chemical reactions. Literally two separate things.
Kids in a shop... playing with whatever is laying around. Copper turnings , Iron filings , graphite powder. .. after that initial scientific burn the" whoa that's cool "switch was flipped and the flood gates open . . I guess I would be doing the same, where and when will this ever happen again was probably the thought. .
"after that initial scientific burn"
Uh, they were _all_ scientific burns! The materials chosen weren't "whatever is laying around", they were selected as theoretically valid extinguishing agents. People who were "playing" with plutonium often didn't fare well, particularly in a configuration prone to a prompt criticality.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 After the Demon Core claimed its second victim, they banned playing with those things by hand. All experiments had to be remotely controlled.
@@josephastier7421 Criticality can occur only with critical mass involved. There is no remote control practice with most subcritical manipulations. People normally work with plutonium compounds in gloveboxes.
Geiger counters melted during these tests!
what gases are given off? did plutonium go into the atmosphere?
what is the price of plutonium? I would imagine a heap of money was spent on this material...........
No gases are given off.
No, it was done in a glovebox, *obviously* .
Several thousands of dollars per gramme. You do understand atoms are not destroyed when things are burned, right?
And so, how much money is a kilogram of Plutonium worth? I have some just lying around.
Can we know why you just threw a bucket of water an that's it.
I wonder what effect liquid nitrogen would have on a plutonium fire.
Plutonium can react with nitrogen to produce plutonium(III) nitride. This reaction takes place at a temperatures near 1000°C.
The Atomic Energy Comission (predecessor to Department of Energy) did testing of liquid nitrogen on burning metals in 1972 and found it to be effective in certain situations, so it's very likely that the cooling effect of liquid nitrogen would overwhelm the sustained exothermic reaction of the plutonium. Apart from encapsulating the plutonium to stop it from reacting, cooling is the most effective way to extinguish a burning plutonium fire.
@@calibob2001 What atmosphere is in the glove boxes during normal use? 1000°C is well below the melting points of common stainless steel alloys:
www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=103
@@josephastier7421 It's mentioned during one test that temperatures were in excess of 2000 degrees.
@ Remove the oxygen and the fire should go out.
Liquid Nitrogen should do the trick.
So you can build cheap reactors from tuna cans lined with oxide sand I think I've got the materials lying about here
It's said, that when machinists had been given pieces of uranium for the first atom bombs, some of the swarf wouldn't come back as demanded. Turns out that they were turning the material into flints for lighters due to a cerium shortage. 😂
If nuclear fuel melts at 2,800°C and consists of Plutonium which melts at 630°C.... what happens?
i wonder what it smells like when it is burning
Radioactivity
I wonder what it would smell like burning.....
...smells like death ☠️
Cancer
They used cheaper reactor grade plutonium for these combustion tests.
In summary. Try not to light plutonium on fire.
And if you do, just toss sand on it, like just about every other fire in a lab. All of that research, then they try the obvious candidate🙄
👏👏👏👍
they have done a lot of shit in the past and created huge amounts of super toxic waste
The ole Taco Bell never disappoints huh!
Go Hanford!!
Y'all see the green flame?
I wonder if a low melting metal such as lead or tin would be effective.....the liquid would effectively cut off oxygen.
2000 grams of plutonium. Not great but not terrible either.
People do not appreciate the power of oxygen......That plutonium "burns" is not so much due to the reactivity of the metal, but rather the high electronegativity of oxygen.....which is even more reactive than chlorine!!! I am far more frightened by oxygen than plutonium.
Spelling Errors in Title Cards, "DIVEDED" & "CASTING SKULLS"
Nuclear Engineers not necessarily "Rocket Scientists"
Your Not well educated huh..
I guess English is not your profession ;),
@@heinrichhein2605 ich Nacht verstanden das inter Lassen.
@mitzvah golem Das verstehe ich nicht. What did you try to say?
@@heinrichhein2605ich glaube das Essen ist fertig. A Danke.
Holly molly this is really a nasty stuff!!
Holy balls , this whole experiment looks so sketchy, start off by burning 2 kg of plutonium! wow that's a lot of waste disposal right there. Then there's the guy picking up bits of burning plutonium, yikes! But it's all ok, we've nearly figured out a way to put it out, and it's fine stored in tuna cans ffs!
It's not sketcky looking at all. It's an experiment showing real life possibilities of an incident.
Where's Geiger Counter
so what did they do with all the mess of these experiments ? dump them into the snake river probably right ?
Straight to the toilet
🤔 maybe you mean the Columbia? This experiment was at Hanford I believe not Idaho national lab
Gather the oxide and nitride and recycle them back. You do understand this element is expensive, useful and guarded, right?
And you just think it would be dumped somewhere? :facepalm:
What kind of condition is this creating?is he oxide non radioactive,
Something for mythbusters