Loved the closing pun! Also I loved that line of: “Some argue efficiency is less desirable, because it makes it easier for groups to develop nuclear weapons” , I could imagine the science and engineering team holding a party after some discovery, then someone being like “wait...”!
I was joking about the fact that Scott does such a good job of explaining all this that his audience might be able to make a nuclear weapon in the end. I think you need to pick up a hobby or something instead of being angry for no reason on the internet.
Apologies if anyone has already mentioned this -- a few seconds before the 5 minute point in this video, there's a chart that contains the following peculiar line: "Stable elements with no naturally occurring stable isotopes". Somebody at Oak Ridge wasn't paying quite enough attention to what they were doing, and did the verbal equivalent of omitting a minus sign.
Leo J. G. Ciaccio ll, That scene in The Pink Panther, but instead of a suitcase full of weapons, your carryon is a Special Atomic Demolitions Device...
Lol. Well, I'm probably on a watch list for the mere fact that I've taken flying lessons. Historically you wouldn't think that matters, but uhh... That whole thing nearly 2 decades ago (you know the one) kinda made being able to fly a plane a point of suspicion. XD Of course, knowing about nuclear physics surely doesn't help either. ... Amongst other things. XD
With that kind of remark, you seem like a person that wouldn't need to be on a plane anyway. Real miniscule in the grand scheme. Kinda like watching videos about nuclear anything. What kind of country do you think you live in? We revoke freedoms for youtube searches? Its not even a good joke.
The first time he said that, on the first video I watched, it scared me out of my wits. Not just bc I know someone who died on Sep-11. He was on the ground though. I also know someone whose husband was on the plane. Flight 93.
The silex method is so exotic and beautifully clever. They're somehow using hyperpolarized (nuclear spin purified) parahydrogen Raman conversion cells to shift a CO2 laser's wavelength to the precise infrared resonance absorption line of a U235 to F molecular bond. I would love to know how they prevent things like collisional excitation transfer to neighboring U238-F molecular bonds from ruining the efficiency.
They actually are having a real problem with heat causing enough change in the hyperfine structure that efficiency is way bellow what they expected from lab tests. A friend of mine was involved with the early efforts and has her name on a couple of patents for these technologies, and she always tells me she loves in with foreign countries try to invest in covert laser enrichment...because they will fail and it will waste their money!
Does silex exploit hyperfine structure for separation? I know that's how AVLIS works, or rather...worked, since it's been abandoned, but I assumed silex was purely using the molecular IR absorption wavelength shifts due to isotopic mass difference.
Like the video suggests, the details are classified. But many people that have their foot closer to this than I do suggest the core principles are basically the same but with better hardware. The rumor mill suggests the heat noise problem still keeps this needing more and more funding..which is a hard ask in this land of excessively cheap uranium.
Are the details a "Born Secret" type of classification? As I understand the concept it's makes certain information classified even if derived independently and hasn't been tested in court.
Scott Manley. One of the very few people on a utube channel who has the proper formal qualifications to sensibly back up his explanations, in an informative yet very entertaining way. 👍
1 million gee? Beautiful. The lengths we'll go to just to get enriched uranium/plutonium. Also, lasers? We're basically at the point where we need to ask the question: what can't lasers do? Instead of asking what lasers can do.
First, lasers are doing fun shit like disabling UAV’s, removing tattoos, cleaning the Washington monument, etc., Second, we should use thorium and plutonium instead of uranium. For more info check out Sam ‘o nella’s video on thorium
Greatest video playlist on TH-cam. These videos remind of my best friend in the US Navy, who was a Nuclear Machinist Mate. We both stood watch at the same time, so between my gauge reading rounds running about our old submarine, I would pick his brain about Nuclear power school and how I was amazed at how we ran our reactor on a theory. Godspeed
Yepp, enriching uranium-235 is the limiting step, which is why heavy water reactors and graphite reactors for producing plutonium from unenriched uranium is so popular.
Just a heads up, but if you ever find yourself in the Pacific North West, you can tour the Hanford B reactor. I grew up across thre river from the bloody thing, and it is open to the public now. Absolutely horrifying how crude the damn thing was.
My dad worked at oak ridge, and I got to visit the experimental reactor during that day they have once every 20 years or something where they can take their families to work. Was really cool seeing the reactor pools from the observatory overhead!
I attended the trade school there and most classes got to see the “swimming” pool reactor. My class missed out on that tour but I did get to take a self-guide Tour of the X 10 reactor by myself. Circa 1981.
4:17 - 4:36 I'm not sure whether short tons or metric tonnes were used at the time, but in either case, 36/1000 of 1% of 14700 tons amounts to about 5000 kg
Very well done, Scott. I started working at a gaseous diffusion plant in 1990 and went through its shutdown. I have co-workers that worked on Silex and DOE's centrifuge design. Our plant shut down several years ago and we are currently working on D&D.
Dear Scott, I know this might seem like an unusual request, but can you tell us about your daily scalp routine? Are you naturally bald or do you shave to maintain baldness? Any moisturisers or oils recommendation for keeping the scalp healthy? That sort of thing Hope you see this, thanks
My uncle Robert Livingston worked on the proof of concept project of magnetic isotope separation. He was there when the first visible speck of U235 was created. He noted that the distance between the specks of U238 and U235 was about six inches. Thanks for helping me remember him.
Your knowledge of the nuclear process is amazing. I ve always been fasinated by this and wanted to learn how the nuclei of atoms are made to split and become a different element. I wish the method of creating bombs was never employed but the science of it all is too interesting to ignore. Thanks Scott.
Fabulous, you have uncovered rare items in this series. In this video, at 7:00 we see a photograph inside the massive gaseous diffusion plant. Not many pictures of that. Looking forward to the plutonium 239 production inside the "Queen Mary" size buildings at Hanford. Legend has it the radiation was so intense (the process used robots) inside that plant that the concrete became somewhat "spongelike". Woo!
Could a Hilsch Vortex tube do isotopic separation? It produces hot and cold gas based on average kinetic energy of the molecules, but the vortex/cyclone runs at over a million rpm because only the gas rotates. Presumably it could also produce oxygen enriched air on demand.
I study nuclear and I haven't heard of this before! The material seems REALLY limited. Early work seems to indicate not great SWU levels compared to centrifuges, but might just be because it wasn't as fully realized technology? TO THE RESEARCH!
For my senior science project. I built a full cut away model of a A bomb. My science teacher gave me a B. I told her if I had twenty two pounds of plutonium she be in trouble.
Well depends on the bomb but getting the shape and mixture of the explosives in a classical implosion bomb exactly right is probably some seriously hardcore maths. But you can always do gun-type one. Probably not that hard, just very wasteful if you are limited in your amount of fissile material.
You're right on the gun type being fairly easy, but extremely inefficient. The big problem with implosion isn't the explosive itself, it's getting all the explosive to detonate at the same time. The timers are as highly classified as the centrifuges according to someone I watched a lecture by from the IAEA.
Given the value of silver, it seems likely that they spent a good deal more money than the silver was worth to recover the last few fractions of a percent.
@lukey666lukey , yes it has. The price has risen due to the fact we mined all of the big chunks of it. Now, we have to mine lots of material just to get a few grams.
@Scott Manley Are you going to at a video about other uses of Uranium such as for medical purposes? (example: U->Mo->Tc) It may not be in your wheel house like the chemistry in this video, but it might be a nice positive video to showcase technologies that have been beneficial rather than destructive.
@scott just curious if anyone has contacted you from the state department after doing all the research for these vids? Another enjoyable video never the less =)
I’m from Oak Ridge, TN my dad worked at K-25, the plant where they enriched the uranium for the atomic bombs. He also worked at Y-12 where they made the warheads for America’s nuclear weapons. They don’t build new ones anymore. They bring in old ones and refurbish them or take them apart and use the nuclear material in medical equipment. My dad died of cancer when I was 10. Not really surprising considering where he worked. He was a good employee and never breathed a word of what he did at work.
Hi Scott, strange question: there is something i dont understand... in the process of making metallic Pu the entire process is highly radioactive, but the endproduct is only shielded by some vinyl. How does that work???? The slugs are irradiated in a reactor (highly radioactive), then separated in a totally shielded process canyon (PUREX), and the endproduct is extracted at a PFP (Plutonium Finishing Plant) again radioactive like hell, then it gets machined to fit a PIT or a fuellrod, and then its only shielded with some zircalloy tube or some vinyl.... Can you make a video about that?
Hey Scott, great series on Nuclear Weapons, learning just how much I don't know about them. I was wondering what happened to Galileo Conquest, hasn't been uploaded in a while. Keep up the good work though!
#Scott Manley , no mention of the ‘aero dynamic’ centripetal separation method South Africa used for its atomic weapons program? Or was that actually just an application of centrifuges we’ve seen most recently?
He mentioned it in a different comment, but it had to be cut for time. Very interesting and I hadn't ever heard of it before so it was a fun read. Looks like the technology dead-ended, though.
Given that most U-235/U-238 isotopic enrichment processes, historically, simply separated them based on their relative masses, would those processes, like centrifuge separation, be less effective if you were separating isotopes with a smaller difference in their respective masses? The difference between U-235 & U-238 is three nucleons while the difference between Pu-239 & Pu-240 or U-232 & U-233 is only one nucleon. Would the smaller difference in relative masses of U-232 & U-233 have no impact on the enrichment process or would it require more processing equipment to do the same job, like (just throwing this out there) requiring 3X the number of centrifuges to effectively separate U-232 & U-233 or Pu-239 & Pu-240?
My Dad went to Oak Rige K-25 after getting his physics degree in "47. I remember asking him what the yellow dust on his shoes was. Safety concerns were secondary still at that point.
Another great vid thanks! I honestly did a double take when you said 13000 tons of silver wiring!!!! Having said that, one of my customers refines lead, a by product of which is silver, tons of it stored on site!!!
Replying to a comment i saw over small yield nuclear devices. A Yield smaller than the little-boy would still vaporize a city such as DC completely, ie. anything over 10kt is to be considered threatening, as you can add warheads of said yield to a MIRV (*Multiple independently target-able reentry vehicle*) missile. Thus not all of the warhead could be intercepted if deployed before interception. Such that even a small yield will be devastating to an infrastructure and population, since you can have many warheads reach a single target or multiple targets simultaneously.. You may also cause a high amount of damage by encasing the weapon in non fissile nuclear material, thus creating a dirty bomb, which the main effect would be the fallout of said device without destroying much of the infrastructure, but by irradiating the area such that the population has to leave the area. But you can irradiate the area to such a level that it can be easily handled by protective gear during an invasion, and then "cleaned" such that now you have the intact infrastructure without further resistance.
I read that companies like beacon power are using carbon fiber centrifuges to store excess renewable energy. Could a pressurised liquid enrichment system be built to provide that function as well?
Ever since the first episode I've been wondering how many angry or threatening messages or cease and desist orders you've gotten for this series. And how you've handled them. If there's anything there, consider making a full episode on that stuff after the series is done? Have you limited the availability of these episodes in "embargo countries?"
Can't think of where to ask this question so ... Would it be possible for nano machines to physically push two nuclei together and cause them to fuse? I know it requires a lot of energy to do it by random chance in a reactor but I figure it may take a lot less energy to physically constrain two nuclei and then force then together, perhaps even by chemical means, e.g. inside a folding protein. Or are the energy requirements orders of magnitude away from that being possible?
Both Stuxnet and Flame were aimed at impeding uranium enrichment. IIRC stuxnet closed vents and caused overheating, flame would rapidly speed up and slow down the centrifuges causing them to break.
One question Scott: Do you still have anything that might resemble a plan to do another episode of Galileo Conquest? I've been waiting on that for months now and have begun to wonder...
A lot of the non-proliferation arguments seem a bit irrelevant given that some very poor countries (Pakistan, North Korea) have obtained the bomb independently. Furthermore, once you can build your first breeder reactor, un-enriched (or even depleted) uranium can be bred into plutonium and fed back into that same reactor eventually generating excess plutonium for bombs without any enrichment process. Anti-proliferation restrictions on civilian power might have made sense prior to the 80s-90s but if we had gone hard on fission power 20 years ago we might now be enjoying cheap power with the lowest greenhouse gases emissions.
You are correct. Proliferation concerns are mainly a political tool used to stop countries from gaining energy independance or lessen their reliance on foreign imports of energy (uranium being dirt cheap in comparison) and should be more viewed in this context. If a nation state really wants nuclear weapons there is not much the international community can do to stop them, which has been proven on at least 3 occasions so far (India, Pakistan and North Korea).
Correctly if I am wrong but didn't Nort Korea acquire the tech from Pakistan? The nuclear supermarket and all that. And the latter acquiring it after India does not surprise me one bit
Some technical details perhaps. I'm mainly talking about the restrictions on fuel reprocessing and breeding in the U.S. based on the fear that material could be stolen.
We do not know exactly what technology transfer occured between Pakistan and Nortkorea. What was transfered shortened the development time but I am pretty sure the Northkoreans would have gotten there in the end regardless, it would have just taken longer. The are still an embarresment to the nuclear club as their first bomb was a fizzle...
Scott: Please do a video sometime about how they get rockets from assembly to the pad? This can include which rockets use different methods, what engineering is required, why you'd choose one method or another. The main methods which come to mind are vertical assembly and transport (e.g. Saturn V), horizontal assembly and transport then rotated vertical on the pad (Falcon, most or all Russian rockets) and assembly on the pad followed by moving the assembly building away prior to launch.
Environmental tangent. Technically speaking nuclear is a low CO2 energy source, but many who do peer review but don't like nuclear will use poor grade ores or gaseous diffusion methods as the primary enrichment to make these numbers seem poor. Also, many suspect that the R&D needed to get laser enrichment off the ground isn't actually worth it in terms of work units gained. Uranium is already so dirt cheap because of excess weapons down blending distorting markets. Until cold war inventories get depleted and uranium prices start to rise, the history lows don't seem compelling to develop laser enrichment
...and make stuff up like, nuclear power leads to nuclear war every 30 years and the burning cities add to the life cycle CO2-emissions. The peer review process need an upgrade for sure.
Closed Paducah, KY gaseous diffusion plant & another plant in Metropolis, IL that had something to do with enrichment a few years ago. Now spending millions on clean up in Paducah. They said they were installing centrifuges in an existing plant in Ohio to replace production.
Scott, I have been wondering how do they take the UF6 after enrichment and get U235 in a solid state? Do they probably just let the UF6 cool down or what? I was never much good at chemistry, so I don't know if there's a simple answer staring me in the face or not.
The most common for reactors is the calcification process: UF6 + 2H2O -> UO2F2 + 4HF UO2F2 + H2O -> U03 + 2HF UO3 + H2 -> UO2 + H2O ------------------------------------- UF6 + 2H2O + H2 = UO2 + 6HF For uranium to metal it is can be a sodium process UF6 + 4NA ->U + 6NaF but also the more common Ames process: UF4 + 2Mg = U + 2MgF2 Uranium metal is very pyrophoric, so it has to be treated with care.
Important note, most of these reactions involve a lot of heat, either needed to get the reaction going or produced by the reaction itself, also the Ames process has the UF4 reduction needed as well. UF6 + H2 -> UF4 + 2HF at 1500-2000 K. In fact, most of them temperatures exist in this range for the reactions.
Are you ever going to cover the theoretical use of nuclear devices for Orion propulsion? I'd love to hear your take on nuclear "shaped charge" propulsion units.
My Physics and Chemistry teachers are getting worried how much I know about making Nuclear bombs. Thanks Scott you are fueling my love of scaring my teachers XD
Andy Lee Robinson U-238 has a MUCH longer half-life than U-235; most decay events would be from spontaneous U-235 events; however phos9 guessed the easier method; just collect, weigh, and measure dimensions of a sample super-accurately to get the density and therefore isotopic ratios.
For lower enriched samples, you are specifically monitering for 185.7-keV gamma rays. This will give you a intensity per unit mass of U235. Similar spectral tools are used to narrow it down further, it gets way more complicated as you use reprocessed fuel. This has to be done with care as different materials compounds of uranium will offer different mean free paths through itself (basically uranium can self shield). The flatter the disk, the easier to measure the true value. When a sample is particularly thick, material composition correction factors come into play to help augment and correct for this internal shielding. In a passive neutron detection is also an option, useful if barriers obstruct more readily disreputable xrays (IE, see gas). Good source "The Measurement of Uranium Enrichment Hastings A Smith,Jr."
The conversion of uranium to plutonium actually caused one of the worst nuclear incidents in the UK, the windscale incident. Worthy of a video all to itself
In addition, I would say that keeping secrets is what actually cause the Windscale fire. The Americans knew how graphite would need to be annealed when exposed to am intense neutron flux. We didn't tell the brits this because we both didn't know they needed to know it.
We sussed the Wigner release pretty quick, but yes, that info would have helped still. The entire endeavour was pretty crazy to be frank. We didn't want to be left behind though, and with pending test ban treaties, the UK needed to work fast
I just finished my basic thermodynamics course like a week ago which included a little bit of statistical physics and hearing about enriching Uranium using difference in molecule speed gives me headache-inducing flashbacks.
Loved the closing pun!
Also I loved that line of:
“Some argue efficiency is less desirable, because it makes it easier for groups to develop nuclear weapons”
, I could imagine the science and engineering team holding a party after some discovery, then someone being like “wait...”!
Another fascinating story is where the uranium used in the Manhattan project came from. Hint: not America.
null090909 you're gay
Finally the next step in this "how to" series. At this pace I'll never be a superpower.
5chr4pn3ll superpowers do things themselves, not wait for their favorite internet heroes to give them wikipedia highlights. Stfu.
I was joking about the fact that Scott does such a good job of explaining all this that his audience might be able to make a nuclear weapon in the end.
I think you need to pick up a hobby or something instead of being angry for no reason on the internet.
@@5chr4pn3ll haha...just hope Isis isn't watching!
Apologies if anyone has already mentioned this -- a few seconds before the 5 minute point in this video, there's a chart that contains the following peculiar line: "Stable elements with no naturally occurring stable isotopes". Somebody at Oak Ridge wasn't paying quite enough attention to what they were doing, and did the verbal equivalent of omitting a minus sign.
Is it supposed to say: "Stable elements with no naturally occurring UNstable isotopes"?
You say "fly safe" but, I really feel like after watching this series I'm not going to be allowed on airplanes anymore. 😔
Leo J. G. Ciaccio ll,
That scene in The Pink Panther, but instead of a suitcase full of weapons, your carryon is a Special Atomic Demolitions Device...
Lol, “fission safe”
Lol. Well, I'm probably on a watch list for the mere fact that I've taken flying lessons.
Historically you wouldn't think that matters, but uhh... That whole thing nearly 2 decades ago (you know the one) kinda made being able to fly a plane a point of suspicion. XD
Of course, knowing about nuclear physics surely doesn't help either.
... Amongst other things. XD
With that kind of remark, you seem like a person that wouldn't need to be on a plane anyway. Real miniscule in the grand scheme. Kinda like watching videos about nuclear anything. What kind of country do you think you live in? We revoke freedoms for youtube searches? Its not even a good joke.
The first time he said that, on the first video I watched, it scared me out of my wits. Not just bc I know someone who died on Sep-11. He was on the ground though. I also know someone whose husband was on the plane. Flight 93.
All the science is fun but the engineering to make it happen is the real magic.
pyropulse String theory turned to be a decades of failure and wasted afford.
scientist discover new worlds. engineers create the world that never was
Amen
Just wait until CERN can "print" gold n stuff
A few more episodes and I'll build my own
The silex method is so exotic and beautifully clever. They're somehow using hyperpolarized (nuclear spin purified) parahydrogen Raman conversion cells to shift a CO2 laser's wavelength to the precise infrared resonance absorption line of a U235 to F molecular bond. I would love to know how they prevent things like collisional excitation transfer to neighboring U238-F molecular bonds from ruining the efficiency.
They actually are having a real problem with heat causing enough change in the hyperfine structure that efficiency is way bellow what they expected from lab tests. A friend of mine was involved with the early efforts and has her name on a couple of patents for these technologies, and she always tells me she loves in with foreign countries try to invest in covert laser enrichment...because they will fail and it will waste their money!
Does silex exploit hyperfine structure for separation? I know that's how AVLIS works, or rather...worked, since it's been abandoned, but I assumed silex was purely using the molecular IR absorption wavelength shifts due to isotopic mass difference.
Like the video suggests, the details are classified. But many people that have their foot closer to this than I do suggest the core principles are basically the same but with better hardware. The rumor mill suggests the heat noise problem still keeps this needing more and more funding..which is a hard ask in this land of excessively cheap uranium.
I guess that's one of the reasons why their stock price has utterly collapsed to like 20 cents over the past decade.
Are the details a "Born Secret" type of classification? As I understand the concept it's makes certain information classified even if derived independently and hasn't been tested in court.
Scott, I bet the FBI agents fight over who gets to monitor you. You are the most entertaining guy to be worried about
Scott Manley. One of the very few people on a utube channel who has the proper formal qualifications to sensibly back up his explanations, in an informative yet very entertaining way. 👍
1 million gee?
Beautiful.
The lengths we'll go to just to get enriched uranium/plutonium.
Also, lasers? We're basically at the point where we need to ask the question: what can't lasers do? Instead of asking what lasers can do.
Bad Beard Bill but... Why aren't lasers doing cool shit?
th-cam.com/video/Wecd5S2pr_Q/w-d-xo.html
have doubts in that number))
First, lasers are doing fun shit like disabling UAV’s, removing tattoos, cleaning the Washington monument, etc., Second, we should use thorium and plutonium instead of uranium. For more info check out Sam ‘o nella’s video on thorium
Lasers can do cool shit. Like cooling down gases.
Sadly the Codyslab video was removed.
He explained that recently. Was raided by the us government and asked to take all videos about bombs, explosives and nuclear material down.
Can't let the plebians know how to do the fun stuff
@@gradertfamilymakes - No way - I didn't hear anyone talking about that. Do much for the spirit of 1st Amendment, I suppose.
Hey dude, it's so nice to come home from work and just watch one of your videos instead of all the man hating stuff. Thanks for being here.
Greatest video playlist on TH-cam. These videos remind of my best friend in the US Navy, who was a Nuclear Machinist Mate. We both stood watch at the same time, so between my gauge reading rounds running about our old submarine, I would pick his brain about Nuclear power school and how I was amazed at how we ran our reactor on a theory. Godspeed
Yepp, enriching uranium-235 is the limiting step, which is why heavy water reactors and graphite reactors for producing plutonium from unenriched uranium is so popular.
Just a heads up, but if you ever find yourself in the Pacific North West, you can tour the Hanford B reactor. I grew up across thre river from the bloody thing, and it is open to the public now. Absolutely horrifying how crude the damn thing was.
Crude? State-of-the-art in 1945...
Really?
@@yukin1990 Nope.
My dad worked at oak ridge, and I got to visit the experimental reactor during that day they have once every 20 years or something where they can take their families to work. Was really cool seeing the reactor pools from the observatory overhead!
I attended the trade school there and most classes got to see the “swimming” pool reactor. My class missed out on that tour but I did get to take a self-guide Tour of the X 10 reactor by myself. Circa 1981.
4:17 - 4:36 I'm not sure whether short tons or metric tonnes were used at the time, but in either case, 36/1000 of 1% of 14700 tons amounts to about 5000 kg
Very well done, Scott. I started working at a gaseous diffusion plant in 1990 and went through its shutdown. I have co-workers that worked on Silex and DOE's centrifuge design. Our plant shut down several years ago and we are currently working on D&D.
Dear Scott,
I know this might seem like an unusual request, but can you tell us about your daily scalp routine? Are you naturally bald or do you shave to maintain baldness? Any moisturisers or oils recommendation for keeping the scalp healthy? That sort of thing
Hope you see this, thanks
I shave maybe once a week.
@@scottmanley : God shave the Queen ! j/k
You are the best on these explanations, i really enjoy watching this, keep it up Scott.
Initially thought the video was going to cover stuff I already knew about nuclear but there were a lot of interesting details here, good work!
My uncle Robert Livingston worked on the proof of concept project of magnetic isotope separation. He was there when the first visible speck of U235 was created. He noted that the distance between the specks of U238 and U235 was about six inches. Thanks for helping me remember him.
I could listen to your voice all day long. Truly excellent work you do on these videos!
10:20 - I thought it was a _proven fact_ that Stuxnet was built for sabotaging the Iranian nuclear programme?
Your knowledge of the nuclear process is amazing.
I ve always been fasinated by this and wanted to learn how
the nuclei of atoms are made to split and become a different element. I wish the method of creating bombs was never employed but the science of it all is too interesting to ignore. Thanks Scott.
Scott, your enriching at the end made the show the bomb! Great job.....
FINALLY a new episode! Love this series!
Fabulous, you have uncovered rare items in this series. In this video, at 7:00 we see a photograph inside the massive gaseous diffusion plant. Not many pictures of that. Looking forward to the plutonium 239 production inside the "Queen Mary" size buildings at Hanford. Legend has it the radiation was so intense (the process used robots) inside that plant that the concrete became somewhat "spongelike". Woo!
Could a Hilsch Vortex tube do isotopic separation? It produces hot and cold gas based on average kinetic energy of the molecules, but the vortex/cyclone runs at over a million rpm because only the gas rotates.
Presumably it could also produce oxygen enriched air on demand.
South Africa used something like this, but I had to leave it out.
OK, and thanks for confirming I'm not the only one to have that idea.
I study nuclear and I haven't heard of this before! The material seems REALLY limited. Early work seems to indicate not great SWU levels compared to centrifuges, but might just be because it wasn't as fully realized technology? TO THE RESEARCH!
YAY, glad to see this series continued (even without CoaDE footage)! Nice job on the research, I learned quite a bit 😉
Worth the wait.
For my senior science project. I built a full cut away model of a A bomb. My science teacher gave me a B. I told her if I had twenty two pounds of plutonium she be in trouble.
"Give me an A+ or we're going to discover if my science project works" xD
That’s basically the plot of the 80s move The Manhattan Project.
and thats what this episode was about, building an atom bomb isn't that hard. Refining and enriching the fuel is.
Well depends on the bomb but getting the shape and mixture of the explosives in a classical implosion bomb exactly right is probably some seriously hardcore maths. But you can always do gun-type one. Probably not that hard, just very wasteful if you are limited in your amount of fissile material.
You're right on the gun type being fairly easy, but extremely inefficient. The big problem with implosion isn't the explosive itself, it's getting all the explosive to detonate at the same time. The timers are as highly classified as the centrifuges according to someone I watched a lecture by from the IAEA.
Cody's video is crazy, hope he will not be sick in the next decade.
that is absolute amazing that they only lost that much silver
Given the value of silver, it seems likely that they spent a good deal more money than the silver was worth to recover the last few fractions of a percent.
@@Keldor314 im sure the price of silver has risen over time
@lukey666lukey , yes it has. The price has risen due to the fact we mined all of the big chunks of it. Now, we have to mine lots of material just to get a few grams.
Oh I'm sorry. We "lost" a couple of kilos.
Finally part 6!! Cant wait to watch when I have time this evening!! :D
Just wanted to mention, my professor showed this video in my Nuclear Propulsion class. I got excited to see when "Scott Manley" showed up. :D
BTW +Scott Manley
Have you ever considered doing a joint project with Issac Arthur?
that's....not how you tag someone but
@Scott Manley Are you going to at a video about other uses of Uranium such as for medical purposes? (example: U->Mo->Tc) It may not be in your wheel house like the chemistry in this video, but it might be a nice positive video to showcase technologies that have been beneficial rather than destructive.
@scott just curious if anyone has contacted you from the state department after doing all the research for these vids? Another enjoyable video never the less =)
I’m from Oak Ridge, TN my dad worked at K-25, the plant where they enriched the uranium for the atomic bombs. He also worked at Y-12 where they made the warheads for America’s nuclear weapons. They don’t build new ones anymore. They bring in old ones and refurbish them or take them apart and use the nuclear material in medical equipment. My dad died of cancer when I was 10. Not really surprising considering where he worked. He was a good employee and never breathed a word of what he did at work.
I would watch an episode about how they get the material into the final form. How do they get it into a sphere?
I think they add a small amount of gallium and then press it into a mold not 100% sure tho
Scott. Thank you so much. For your intellect and drive to inform. You are an amazing transmitter of information.
Hi Scott, strange question: there is something i dont understand... in the process of making metallic Pu the entire process is highly radioactive, but the endproduct is only shielded by some vinyl. How does that work???? The slugs are irradiated in a reactor (highly radioactive), then separated in a totally shielded process canyon (PUREX), and the endproduct is extracted at a PFP (Plutonium Finishing Plant) again radioactive like hell, then it gets machined to fit a PIT or a fuellrod, and then its only shielded with some zircalloy tube or some vinyl.... Can you make a video about that?
Yessss i missed this series more than you know scott!
Thanks professor, this series is fascinating, I can't wait for part 7 and beyond.
Hey Scott, I met you in a Team Fortress 2 lobby 8 years ago. Glad to see u still making videos
AshGreninjaBC, I never knew he played TF2!
Mystery Man - He breaths air and does not perform photosynthesis. It's pretty fair to say that he almost certainly played TF2.
Operator 801 sorry to kill your hypothesis, but ive never played tf2.
milkbox you must be a plant.
Sheldon Robertson it happens to everyone im sure, but you typed that in the comment field, instead of the search box.
Finally. Was wondering what happened to this series...
Just the thought of electro lazering different atoms into different containers hurts my head. Like HTF? Amazing series!!!!
Seems like the video from Cody is no longer available?
You can still get it using the wayback machine, although its player doesn't work properly so you'd probably have to download it
Hey Scott, great series on Nuclear Weapons, learning just how much I don't know about them. I was wondering what happened to Galileo Conquest, hasn't been uploaded in a while. Keep up the good work though!
LOVE this series! Could go for 10 more episodes 😉
#Scott Manley , no mention of the ‘aero dynamic’ centripetal separation method South Africa used for its atomic weapons program? Or was that actually just an application of centrifuges we’ve seen most recently?
He mentioned it in a different comment, but it had to be cut for time. Very interesting and I hadn't ever heard of it before so it was a fun read. Looks like the technology dead-ended, though.
Given that most U-235/U-238 isotopic enrichment processes, historically, simply separated them based on their relative masses, would those processes, like centrifuge separation, be less effective if you were separating isotopes with a smaller difference in their respective masses? The difference between U-235 & U-238 is three nucleons while the difference between Pu-239 & Pu-240 or U-232 & U-233 is only one nucleon. Would the smaller difference in relative masses of U-232 & U-233 have no impact on the enrichment process or would it require more processing equipment to do the same job, like (just throwing this out there) requiring 3X the number of centrifuges to effectively separate U-232 & U-233 or Pu-239 & Pu-240?
Dear Scott ...you are awesome...god bless you.
My Dad went to Oak Rige K-25 after getting his physics degree in "47. I remember asking him what the yellow dust on his shoes was. Safety concerns were secondary still at that point.
Another great vid thanks! I honestly did a double take when you said 13000 tons of silver wiring!!!! Having said that, one of my customers refines lead, a by product of which is silver, tons of it stored on site!!!
Series continues, nice! Instant Like!
Love the series and all your content. Thanks so much for the share.
Replying to a comment i saw over small yield nuclear devices.
A Yield smaller than the little-boy would still vaporize a city such as DC completely, ie. anything over 10kt is to be considered threatening, as you can add warheads of said yield to a MIRV (*Multiple independently target-able reentry vehicle*) missile.
Thus not all of the warhead could be intercepted if deployed before interception.
Such that even a small yield will be devastating to an infrastructure and population, since you can have many warheads reach a single target or multiple targets simultaneously..
You may also cause a high amount of damage by encasing the weapon in non fissile nuclear material, thus creating a dirty bomb, which the main effect would be the fallout of said device without destroying much of the infrastructure, but by irradiating the area such that the population has to leave the area.
But you can irradiate the area to such a level that it can be easily handled by protective gear during an invasion, and then "cleaned" such that now you have the intact infrastructure without further resistance.
I read that companies like beacon power are using carbon fiber centrifuges to store excess renewable energy. Could a pressurised liquid enrichment system be built to provide that function as well?
Ever since the first episode I've been wondering how many angry or threatening messages or cease and desist orders you've gotten for this series. And how you've handled them. If there's anything there, consider making a full episode on that stuff after the series is done? Have you limited the availability of these episodes in "embargo countries?"
... a sort of "behind the scenes" episode...
There's nothing in this series that's restricted, so no official contacts. Only problem has been demonetization which takes a day or so to get sorted.
Can't think of where to ask this question so ...
Would it be possible for nano machines to physically push two nuclei together and cause them to fuse? I know it requires a lot of energy to do it by random chance in a reactor but I figure it may take a lot less energy to physically constrain two nuclei and then force then together, perhaps even by chemical means, e.g. inside a folding protein.
Or are the energy requirements orders of magnitude away from that being possible?
Both Stuxnet and Flame were aimed at impeding uranium enrichment. IIRC stuxnet closed vents and caused overheating, flame would rapidly speed up and slow down the centrifuges causing them to break.
Hey! The Long Dark t-shirt! Good to see other people playing the game as well
I found this Outstanding Channel searching YT for the word "urchine" !!!
Part 6 and we had gotten to enrichment... I have a feeling that we'll get to engines only after they'd finally get to be tested irl. Part 73?
Part 42 or 69. One or the other.
There is also the separation nozzle process which uses microfluidic nozzles to separate the different isotopes.
One question Scott: Do you still have anything that might resemble a plan to do another episode of Galileo Conquest?
I've been waiting on that for months now and have begun to wonder...
YES I love this series so much thank you scott!
A lot of the non-proliferation arguments seem a bit irrelevant given that some very poor countries (Pakistan, North Korea) have obtained the bomb independently. Furthermore, once you can build your first breeder reactor, un-enriched (or even depleted) uranium can be bred into plutonium and fed back into that same reactor eventually generating excess plutonium for bombs without any enrichment process.
Anti-proliferation restrictions on civilian power might have made sense prior to the 80s-90s but if we had gone hard on fission power 20 years ago we might now be enjoying cheap power with the lowest greenhouse gases emissions.
You are correct. Proliferation concerns are mainly a political tool used to stop countries from gaining energy independance or lessen their reliance on foreign imports of energy (uranium being dirt cheap in comparison) and should be more viewed in this context. If a nation state really wants nuclear weapons there is not much the international community can do to stop them, which has been proven on at least 3 occasions so far (India, Pakistan and North Korea).
Correctly if I am wrong but didn't Nort Korea acquire the tech from Pakistan? The nuclear supermarket and all that. And the latter acquiring it after India does not surprise me one bit
Some technical details perhaps. I'm mainly talking about the restrictions on fuel reprocessing and breeding in the U.S. based on the fear that material could be stolen.
We do not know exactly what technology transfer occured between Pakistan and Nortkorea. What was transfered shortened the development time but I am pretty sure the Northkoreans would have gotten there in the end regardless, it would have just taken longer.
The are still an embarresment to the nuclear club as their first bomb was a fizzle...
Plutonium based weapons are much more complicated to design than uranium based weapons
Where is the next video promised at the end of the above video?
Another great informative video, thanks Scott
How can one man know so much. True inspiration right here!
Yeah very interesting
Hey Scott, do you keep a list of recommend books?
What were the membranes used in the uranium hexafluoride enrichment process made of, and how did they make the very tiny holes in them?
Sintered nickel powder or initially woven mesh rolled to make the holes smaller.
@@donaldasayers Hi-Tech for the early 1940's ? (!)
Such a bombastic series.
I admire how every society builds its most dangerous facilities RIGHT NEXT TO THE WATER! Spreading the "love".
Anything that generates power is safest if there’s a large body of water to help with cooling. It’s an intentional choice for safety and efficiency.
Scott: Please do a video sometime about how they get rockets from assembly to the pad? This can include which rockets use different methods, what engineering is required, why you'd choose one method or another. The main methods which come to mind are vertical assembly and transport (e.g. Saturn V), horizontal assembly and transport then rotated vertical on the pad (Falcon, most or all Russian rockets) and assembly on the pad followed by moving the assembly building away prior to launch.
Didn't you ask this a week ago?
Yes but I didn't know if you'd seen it so I decided one more try. Thanks for noticing,
Environmental tangent. Technically speaking nuclear is a low CO2 energy source, but many who do peer review but don't like nuclear will use poor grade ores or gaseous diffusion methods as the primary enrichment to make these numbers seem poor. Also, many suspect that the R&D needed to get laser enrichment off the ground isn't actually worth it in terms of work units gained. Uranium is already so dirt cheap because of excess weapons down blending distorting markets. Until cold war inventories get depleted and uranium prices start to rise, the history lows don't seem compelling to develop laser enrichment
I just know their talking points still resinate
Some nuclear reactor designs work with unenriched uranium.
...and make stuff up like, nuclear power leads to nuclear war every 30 years and the burning cities add to the life cycle CO2-emissions. The peer review process need an upgrade for sure.
Ya, Jacobson's work is a joke in that area.
Great series I was fearing you put it down
Closed Paducah, KY gaseous diffusion plant & another plant in Metropolis, IL that had something to do with enrichment a few years ago. Now spending millions on clean up in Paducah. They said they were installing centrifuges in an existing plant in Ohio to replace production.
Scott, I have been wondering how do they take the UF6 after enrichment and get U235 in a solid state? Do they probably just let the UF6 cool down or what?
I was never much good at chemistry, so I don't know if there's a simple answer staring me in the face or not.
The most common for reactors is the calcification process:
UF6 + 2H2O -> UO2F2 + 4HF
UO2F2 + H2O -> U03 + 2HF
UO3 + H2 -> UO2 + H2O
-------------------------------------
UF6 + 2H2O + H2 = UO2 + 6HF
For uranium to metal it is can be a sodium process
UF6 + 4NA ->U + 6NaF
but also the more common Ames process:
UF4 + 2Mg = U + 2MgF2
Uranium metal is very pyrophoric, so it has to be treated with care.
Christopher Willis Thank you! Fascinating.
Important note, most of these reactions involve a lot of heat, either needed to get the reaction going or produced by the reaction itself, also the Ames process has the UF4 reduction needed as well.
UF6 + H2 -> UF4 + 2HF at 1500-2000 K. In fact, most of them temperatures exist in this range for the reactions.
Are you ever going to cover the theoretical use of nuclear devices for Orion propulsion? I'd love to hear your take on nuclear "shaped charge" propulsion units.
What is the best method to separation of isotope of uranium
I have driven by the Hanford site many times along the highway... An unbelievable number of mounds for material storage in neat rows
5:53, You mean 100kWhrs/SWU, not 100kW/SWU. (Great videos, love them).
Well delivered and explained buddy!
When is Part 7 coming?
It is so hard to watch the Cody's video these days
My enjoyment of this video was amplified once I recognized my favorite ksp guys voice lol
My Physics and Chemistry teachers are getting worried how much I know about making Nuclear bombs. Thanks Scott you are fueling my love of scaring my teachers XD
Excellent video scott
North Korea war heads are so bad they could improve yield by 400% just by watching this series
The Spherical Earth - If only they were allowed to use the internet...
The top echelon of the goverment does have access to the internet
King Peter - Mr. Shitsonjokes, glad you could make it.
Isn't this what they call "underestimating"? It's not logical to see their ICBMs working so well to then assume the warheads are bunk.
FriedEgg the yield is less than little boy and their missiles might as well just be catapults
Great series Scott, thanks!
I feel like NSA is going to show up at my door for watching these lol. All joking aside Awesome job! this series has been fascinating
How do they measure the purity of the isotope sample they have?
Joe Bloe if it’s in its elemental metallic form I think you can just carefully calculate its density.
I'd guess they'd use the energy spectrum of its radioactivity.
Measure it's radioactivity. It's calculable, so you can check how closely it matches.
Andy Lee Robinson
U-238 has a MUCH longer half-life than U-235; most decay events would be from spontaneous U-235 events; however phos9 guessed the easier method; just collect, weigh, and measure dimensions of a sample super-accurately to get the density and therefore isotopic ratios.
For lower enriched samples, you are specifically monitering for 185.7-keV gamma rays. This will give you a intensity per unit mass of U235. Similar spectral tools are used to narrow it down further, it gets way more complicated as you use reprocessed fuel. This has to be done with care as different materials compounds of uranium will offer different mean free paths through itself (basically uranium can self shield). The flatter the disk, the easier to measure the true value. When a sample is particularly thick, material composition correction factors come into play to help augment and correct for this internal shielding. In a passive neutron detection is also an option, useful if barriers obstruct more readily disreputable xrays (IE, see gas).
Good source
"The Measurement of Uranium Enrichment
Hastings A Smith,Jr."
The conversion of uranium to plutonium actually caused one of the worst nuclear incidents in the UK, the windscale incident. Worthy of a video all to itself
In addition, I would say that keeping secrets is what actually cause the Windscale fire. The Americans knew how graphite would need to be annealed when exposed to am intense neutron flux. We didn't tell the brits this because we both didn't know they needed to know it.
We sussed the Wigner release pretty quick, but yes, that info would have helped still. The entire endeavour was pretty crazy to be frank. We didn't want to be left behind though, and with pending test ban treaties, the UK needed to work fast
Ya, now yall are leaders in graphite...for better or worse!
Scott you should come and visit Hanford they have B-Reactor tours and you could also visit LIGO
Cody's video is private currently. Do you have any other sources? Can't get enough of this knowledge.
I just finished my basic thermodynamics course like a week ago which included a little bit of statistical physics and hearing about enriching Uranium using difference in molecule speed gives me headache-inducing flashbacks.
Am I going to be on a list for watching this series?
How did we get from ksp let’s plays to building a nuclear warhead?
Nuclear warheads, killer asteroid and rockets were my thing going before KSP ever existed