/sci/ - Science & Math

From my (extremely limited) understanding of fission you could re-cast a weapons core into fuel rods, it would be harder to control thanks to enrichment but I can't see any reason it couldn't be done.

>>11637966
Yeah, it seems straight forward enough at first sight. Just cast the core and make a bunch of little rods.

Nuclear reactors are really simple, the reason they are expensive and complicated IRL is safety. If you are going balls to the wall yoi can make a simple one with ease. In theory the Plutonium would give out a lot of energy but no idea how to calculate that. Each warhead has about 10kg of it no? The core would end up miniscule at the end of it, like unironically the size of a shoe box. This would make heat transfer to the water a bit annoying due to low surface area.

Could you mix lead on it to make it less reactive and spread it out? IIRC lead when bombarded with alpha radiation turns unto Uranium no? Would make the core last stupid long.

>>11637995
I think if you cut the uranium / plutonium with something transparent to neutrons (neither reflector or absorber) you could make the core physically big enough for easier heat transfer pretty cheaply.

>>11638011
Would such dilution affect the effectiviness of the core though? And how does onne even beging to calculate the output lf such monstrosity of a device?

It's entirely possible to create nuclear batteries, they're just extremely expensive due to the exotic materials involved and safety equipment/maintenance.

The mars rover use nuclear batteries. If you have a few million dollars you can have a nuclear battery installed in your back yard.
Yes, they are for sale!! Capitalism HO!

>>11637963
That's actually what they are doing.
Using up the huge stockpiles of enriched uranium and plutonium to fuel reactors.

>>11638026
No idea on both counts.

>>11638027
Aren't nuclear batteries RTGs?

>>11638027
wait, nvm, the company that offered those went out of business 2 years ago

RTGs are nowhere as efficient as regular water turbine reactors. RTGs however are much sturdier and durable, which makes them great for when you need constant power and can't babysit the reactor.

>>11637966
modern thermonuclear weapon is a little more complicated then that you cant just crush the warhead and expect to extract fission material straight out

>>11638108
Well, yeah. You need to crush it carefully. Take your time and slowly crush the right parts.

On the good side though it's pretty much impossible for it to go off accidentally, so no need to worry about that

>>11638131
>go off accidentally
high explosives will still kill you but it won't go critical

>>11638084
Peltier coolers normally are, even though they would be the ideal mechanism to turn nuclear heat directly into electricity without the need for water. However solid state physics hasn't offered any effective solutions.

But to OP's point, the energy released is a nuclear reactor is through a continious fission breakdown of its elements. The nuclear material in a warhead isn't breaking down unless you explode it. Not to mention most nukes now are fission based so its harder to power off of hydrogen gas.

>>11638108
from what I understand plutonium is the convenient byproduct from making uranium nuclear fuel rods. This was one of the reasons why hippies protested nuclear power as it was believed to feed to nuclear arms race.

Again, the plutonium is more inert than uranium unless you bang it together to make it go boom.

>>11638178
>convenient byproduct
not by a long shot. it's pretty challenging to transform fuel rod stuff to explody weapon grade fission material. that's why iran, north korea etc find it so hard to hide all the large facilities needed to enrich the fuel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium

>>11637963
>>11638178
I think this is what you're looking for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium?#Downblending

>The opposite of enriching is downblending; surplus HEU can be downblended to LEU to make it suitable for use in commercial nuclear fuel.

So it would require so assembly. Nice, more ways to kill the workers. Or not, how radioactive is this anyway? Isn't fallout dangerous cause the fission makes a bunch of real short lived atoms that shit radiation everywhere?

Imagine being able to transfer your consciousness between clones and having it be cheaper than protective gear so you just work with radioactive material and get blasted to fuck but you fear nothing because clones which is neat but then you have to extract the most value out of clones because efficiency so you push yourself to the limit trying to work on your nuclear projects even as you slowly die of mega cancer now only instead of clones it's workers and instead of efficiency it's capitalism lmao

>>11638035
>Capitalism... HO...

Ironic. The plutonium is actually too good at fission to make decent nuclear fuel. It would actually be harder to keep it stable without meltdown than uranium.

>>11637963
There's probably very little plutonium in a single warhead anymore. Most of the yield comes from fusion in both the primary and the secondary. A lot of work has been put into trimming the most expensive and high maintenance part of them.

>>11640416
You still need enough for a explosions though, so at least the bare minimum for criticality

>>11640481
Obiously, but the fusion boosted, levitated pit design has reduced the mass of plutonium needed significantly. Criticality isn't just about mass itself, rather how that mass is shaped and compressed, and billions of dollars have gone into making the mass that is needed as small as possible.

>>11640872
Which makes turning a nuke into a reactor that much more challenging. The mass and shape are optimized for critical fission induced via chemical explosion not cal fission that lets off heat for a water turbine.

What if you had 2 nukes? Would that help? Shape one core into a large block with holes and the second into a bunch of little rods? Could you add some lead into it as to increase the mass of the core itself and help it regulate itself?

>>11638031
>Aren't nuclear batteries RTGs?
Yes.

>>11638512

How did Israel hide theirs so well? Or was it just the fact that no one ever tried to stop them?

>>11642871
The USA handwaves them away and protects them thats why