Uranium ore is going to be essentially useless to Al Qaeda. Refining that into weapons grade, or even power plant grade, uranium is way beyond their abilities. Those processes require a tremendous amount of power and industrial equipment.
I heard making a nuclear bomb was relatively simple too, back in the fourth grade. Later, I actually studied the Manhattan Project (and its Soviet counterpart) and how modern nuclear weapons are made and realized it’s actually pretty damn difficult. Compared to refining the ore into useful fissile material and producing a reliable detonator, getting some uranium ore is trivially easy.
If he does, I hope he’s keeping it in his pocket, right by the family jewels.
ive wondered about this i watched the manhattan project and thought it seemed relatively easy to make a atom bomb,and thought why does it need radio active material wouldnt any atom split release a lot of energy.
anybody know?
Yes, any atom splitting releases a lot of energy. All atoms heavier than Iron are theoretically capable of undergoing fission. Practically, it’s only possible to make a fission chain reaction with atoms that are marginally stable. These atoms only require the capture of a single neutron to cause fission. The unstable nuclei all are inherently radioactive (they spontaneously split occasionally), we just help them along when making a bomb.
Yes, pretty much any atom will release energy when split. However, for elements lighter than Iron, it takes more energy to split the atom than is released (incidentally, it works just in reverse for fusion: elements heavier than Iron require more energy to fuse than is released). Where Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 come into play is that not only can they be split easily with a single neutron, when split they release two more neutrons that both have enough energy to split additional U-235 (or Pu-239) atoms. This means that a relatively small initial investment of energy can unleash a huge outpouring of energy as the ensuing chain reaction causes all (well, not all, but a significant percentage) of the atoms to split in a very short time.
One big engineering problem is that because splitting an atom releases a lot of energy, if left to itself a pile of Uranium would break apart before the chain reaction had gone more than a few steps. You’d get a small flash of energy and a big mess, but nothing that would flatten a city. The major feat for the scientists at Los Alamos to overcome was to design the explosive detonator so that it would produce a shockwave that would compress the Uranium and hold it together just long enough to ensure that the chain reaction progressed far enough to create a really huge blast. The shockwave had to move inward and do so in a perfectly symmetrical sphere, which isn’t something they normally do. Creating the fuel for the bomb (in Oak Ridge Tennessee for the Uranium, and Hanford Washington for the Plutonium) took a huge amount of work and expense, but the theory was relatively straightforward. Building the detonator was the really uncertain part.
You are confusing Uranium and Plutonium. The “Little Boy” bomb was a U-235 bomb that used a simple gun-type assembly system. “Fat Man” was a Pu-239 bomb that used the implosion system you described.
Well one issue I know of is just the problem for a uranium bomb is just getting U-235. I mean if you have just plain uranium you have a mix with mostly U-238 which isn’t what you need. So basically you need to extract out the U-235 which is apparently a pain since you can’t use chemical differences to separate them because there arn’t really any. (Well that and just working with the stuff is a pain I guess. I know that some separation processes convert it to uranium hexafluoride which is apparently extremely reactive.)
On the other hand once you have some U-235 the bomb itself isn’t that hard to make, it’ll just weigh in at 5-10 tons.
The scientists on the Manhattan Project were so sure that the design of the “Little Boy” U-235 bomb would work (they thought it was too simple to possibly fail) that it wasn’t even tested before it was dropped on Hiroshima.
It worked.
You’re right, that was dumb of me to mix up.
Splitting an atom heavier than iron releases a lot of energy considering that atoms are really, really small. But it’s still a tiny amount of energy in absolute terms.
In a fission bomb explosion, you split around a million, billion, billion atoms, so all those little bits of energy add up. To do that, you need an accelerating chain reaction, which means you need a material that is fissile.
Re the OP - I’m glad Osama has some uranium ore. It should keep him busy for a while, picking out the U235 with tweezers…
Of course, he might decide to go another route and build a reactor that can run on natural uranium like the Canadian CANDU, to make plutonium. For that he needs a lot of heavy water. Should keep him busy for a while, picking out the deuterium with tweezers…
Well, it seems to me that all bin Laden has to do is to get his hands on about 150 lbs. of U235. He could get that from Russia or Pakistan. No one would ever give it to him since it can be traced back, but who knows how good Russian security is and Pakistan is full of sympathizers. If he can, a gun-type weapon could be easily built. Given that he hasn’t done it yet, it may be harder than we think.
FWIW,
Rob