6 ms·
Building a nuclear warhead requires assembling a large sphere (ish) of material well above critical mass faster than it can explode. Only then does the chain re
by scythe 3y ago
Building a nuclear warhead requires assembling a large sphere (ish) of material well above critical mass faster than it can explode. Only then does the chain reaction efficiently consume a lot of fuel before it breaks up (inertial confinement). Usually, you need to use explosives to blast the different pieces of fuel into each other. This requires very accurate control of the explosions that ignite the warhead, and is where the secrets are.
A nuclear reactor uses fuel juuuust barely above critical mass so the reaction is slow. It's a very different thing. Producing the fuel is just basic centrifuge isotope separation, which has many non-fission applications.
- febusravenga 3y ago> juuuust barely above critical mass Interesting. Everyone says that nuclear reactors are safe and material can't be used to build bomb, how are we ensuring that were always only tiny bit above CM... And this bit doesn't grow unexpectedly. As laic, i see many failure modes, starting with simple accidents in handling of rods or bad storage
- Wildgoose 3y agoIt's actually just below Critical Mass. (For obvious reasons). You need sufficient fissile material to provide the increased neutron flow generating heat which you can use to power generators, but you have to then extract that heat efficiently to prevent your nuclear core from literally melting.
- YakBizzarro 3y agowell, not really. the fuel in typical reactor is lowly enriched uranium (LEU), meaning that only a small percentage of the fuel is actually fissile (ie. it breaks when interacting with one neutron and release energy). So no, it can't get sustain an exponentially growing reaction chain in any condition, since neutrons are absorbed by the non-fissile part of the fuel