Atom Bombs

Windscale was set up to refine uranium to make bombs and that is all. Disposal of waste from power stations does not need reprocessing it only needs dumping it is reprocessed to make bombs.

 

Natural uranium is a mixture of ²³⁸U₉₂ and ²³⁵U₉₂ with other isotopes such as uranium 233 now natural uranium can be used in a pile to create heat to drive turbines by raising steam but during the cooking ²³⁸U₉₂ +n > ²³⁹Pu₉₃ + e, the odd numbers are the ones that are unstable and undergo fission. So plutonium is not only a nuclear fuel but a bomb as well. The difference between a reactor and a bomb is just the speed of the reaction. ²³²Th₉₁ + n > ²³³U₉₂ + e and uranium 233 can be used to make bombs from thorium. Thorium is quite common and to make it into uranium 233 a nuclear reactor is required.

 

To make a reactor enriched uranium is used, here uranium hexafluoride is passed through a series of ultracentrifuges (the mechanism is the same as a centrifuge) the heavy fraction containing more uranium 238 goes to the outside and the lighter fraction containing uranium 235 goes towards the centre. This central duct goes into about 12 stages of discs to make 99% pure uranium 235 hexafluoride and the other feed has 99% pure uranium 238. This uranium 235 hexafluoride is passed over a hot plate and it decomposes leaving fluorine to recycle and uranium 235 as a thin sheet. The bomb maker measures the thickness of the sheet with a micrometer and calculates what diameter is needed to make a disc of the just over the critical mass and the disc is measured and scribed with a divider and cut out with scissors (known as uranium shears). This disc is bend with hand tools over a former to make a hemisphere and then with another former into a hollow sphere about the size of a grape. The uranium has the appearance and malleability of lead but a yellow oxide forms on the surface. The sphere is gold plated, weighed and the serial number and wd ^ is sprayed on to print on it.  

 

Fissile material is dangerous and if two discs (bomb blanks) are laid on top of another they splutter and fizz. If a bomb warhead (the sphere) is crushed it will go off slowly and form a ball of fire. This does occasionally happen so the assembly teams are in separate huts like firework factories.

 

In order to make the bomb explode the reaction has to be over in 100 milliseconds or so, the way this is done is to crush the sphere with lens shaped charges of TNT to crush it into a pea sized spherical lump. Once the critical density and mass is reached spontaneous fission makes a chain reaction start and where the mean free path is inside the pea sized lump a chain reaction will result in the whole thing getting very hot 200 million degrees and then it vaporises as it does so the explosion peters out and the Hiroshima bomb was only ½ the power it was meant to be because of this, they now put the explosion chamber inside a lead lined steel ball to contain the fire as long as possible in order for the reaction to go to completion.

 

The hydrogen bomb is an atom bomb (it is the size of an orange and is called a clockwork orange) inside a container of lithium hydride. This is a white powder that inflames in air. Some hydrogen bombs use lithium only. There is no hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb. The first stage of the explosion is the formation of a vapour phase lithium dimer hence the star trek joke “dilithium crystals”.  

 

The TNT is detonated by a normal detonator which is lit by a fuse. The fuse is started by a percussion cap and initiated by a revolver mechanism that is driven by clockwork.

 

The British “Clockwork Orange” has two levers one down to cock it and one circular one at the bottom to set time. There is a reset button. The Russian hydrogen bomb has two timers and two detonators, the 7 day timer and the ten second tamper timer at the back and uses lithium as the main charge.

 

The American bombs have a shell of cobalt and inject the bomb just before the explosion with tritium to increase the yield of neutrons to convert the cobalt into radioactive cobalt 60 to destroy the enemy territory for 5000 years.

 

Plutonium is a silvery high melting point material and is made from black plutonium oxide from power stations by reduction with hydrogen, it is formed into a sphere slightly smaller than a grape by sintering and is compressed by TNT in the same way as the uranium bomb. The critical mass for plutonium is less than uranium 235 (depends on the purity, it went from 95% for Hiroshima to 99% now) and in each case it is less than 5 grams for uranium and less than 4 grams for plutonium, I used to make uranium bombs at one time and knew the critical mass off by heart, but I’ve forgotten the exact value now. It is about 3.8 g for plutonium (I had to work this out once) and about 4.8g for uranium 235. Plutonium oxide is available in tonnage quantities but requires elaborate metal working facilities to make a bomb. The hexafluoride process can be purchased from a German company.

 

The flasks of radioactive material that cross the country are probably plutonium oxide dissolved in nitric acid with the remains of the uranium 238 and 235. They are very nasty and difficult to handle. They use liquids because they can be pumped.

 

Islam has invented a new type of bomb, the electrically ignited hydrogen bomb. This uses a small (the size of a 13 amp cartridge fuse) tube of hydrogen at atmospheric pressure wound with 5 turns of 16 gauge tinned copper wire. A pulse of current is passed through the wire from a flash gun mechanism and the hydrogen undergoes fusion and this ignites a charge of lithium in the form of a pellet around the tube. These are quite small, their acorn bomb yields 4 tones of TNT and they are in use in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They use the same mathematics and physics of the stellerator.

 

Tesla had these first and were called Tesla bombs. These used air as the fuel.

 

Times change!

 

We will only have peace when we all have a hydrogen bomb and a stellerator in the cupboard under the stairs.

 

I thought I would enlighten you, those that don’t know.

 

Chris.

 

Ban the Bomb!