Nukes out of any uranium waste

[Styrge]

Make your own nuclear weapon using a laser printer; waste from any nuclear power plant or even from uranium mines is prime bomb material! This sums up the following article, which may disturb even experienced reader as safety illusions created by the nuclear industry inevitably shatters. Be warned and here you go!

 

 

Beginning with the shell model of the nucleus, which has not been processed in public on this level since the Nobel-prizes. It is a system that has earned at least 4 different Nobels. The only somewhat recognized one Einstein received 1922 from photoelectric effect. He explained the mechanism of photon inflicted ionization which leads to an electrical ion pair. Then some crucial additions were made by H. Jenssen, M. Göppert-Mayer and Eugen Wigner. Altought they earned their Nobels as well, their work is forgotten by the media and classified. What was so dangerous they discovered that none of it has been published for practical development?

 

Electron shells contain 4-5 different atom orbitals called s, t, d, p ect. (and these contain the hyperfine levels). An electron can be in any of these states depending on how charged the particles like neutrons are in the nucleus. That defines the ionization potential for ejecting the loosest electron. It can be measured with the Frank-Hertz experiment or calculated from a simple formula eVj=hcT3. Calculations show an absorbation boundary, where the incoming radiation has an energy quantum sufficient to detach the electron for ionization.

 

When the shells in the nucleus of the atom consist of more neutrons, they cause a slight difference in both weight and the electrical field affecting the outermost valence electrons hyperfine transitions. Extra mass bounds, creates spin interference pattern and masks the electrostatic force of the protons. Resulting chance electron behaviour is called the hyperfine isotope effect. Or longitudinal Zeeman-phenomenon. This may sound nugatory but...

 

What is the difference between uranium isotopes U-235 and U-238? We are approaching the point. They have an equal amount of protons and electrons and are electrochemically very similiar. Biggest difference is that the isotope U-238 has three extra neutrons as can be seen from the nucleon number. If one more is applied via radiation, the neutron breaks up into proton and electron forming Np-239 which immediately decays into Pu-239 in the same manner. This is how the elements can transform. When making nuclear power, we have to increase the portion of U-235 compared to U-238 which initially is only 0,71%. The process is called isotope enrichment. Weight difference between the isotopes is only one per cent and separating them is extremely difficult. Or was!

 

Officially an isotope is separated through 3000 massive centrifugal tubes in uraniumhexafluoride form. Process is hazardous, consumes cities of electricity, is inefficient and expensive and so on. Still that sort of cascade produces not much more than 55kg uranium a year. On top of all, now we get to the hot part, it can be totally replaced by a simple mechanism! Let's construct a following apparatus: gas form of uranium, for example, is sprayed like electrons in a kathode ray tube TV-set so that every atom gets subjected to an adjustable laser beam. Precise adjustment is the key, since U-235 and U-238 will lose their valence electron with a slightly different energies. Always only the uranium isotope that has a weaker grip to this electron will be ionized and the one with stronger bound holds the atom together. After that, the substances have a totally different electrical characteristics! All we need is a simple static elecrode to guide the ionized uraniums to another route and voilá! Suddenly we have a suitcase form of isotope separator with stunning efficiency!

 

The reduction of effort in the enrichment process is concreticly world-tipping! The idea has been theoretically known for a long time already. Introduced by this bunch of Nobel-class scientists and a research carefully covered up, it is probably one of the most dangerous inventions in the world. As it tends to be with nuclear physics. No wonder this is the stuff nuclear power industry doesn't want to read from the internet!

 

The significance of this matter is emphasized in separating plutonium isotopes, which is even harder than uranium enrichment. To this day, purifying Pu-239 from average nuclear waste to a bomb stage has obviously been too difficult. If the waste is not specificly produced with plutonium in mind, it contains too much of Pu-240 which is a neutron poison and prevents the explosion. But can be removed with the hyperfine level device, no problem! It's probably the only machine in the world capable of doing this!

 

So, presented above is the technique to compile a nuclear weapon out of any uranium source. It will come out a bit too heavy to carry 55kg plus casing. That's why military has been developing a long time now, an infantry utilized nuclear weapon. For that purpose, there is a tendency to reclaim especially the easily accessible nuclear waste from civil nuclear power plants. Same stuff that Posiva for example is gathering millions of kilos to Olkiluoto. You could have some lightweight bombs out of it, just under the 10kg critical mass of plutonium. The fact that gives shivers to the ruling businessmen in the nuclear power industry whenever their waste products disappear from some outhouse or plastic shed storage! Especially now with the "hyperfine level gizmo" spreading out in the net and potentially tested in any garage. It's time to leave the uranium in the ground.

[YT2095]

Thread moved to Pseudoscience and Speculations.

[swansont]

Officially an isotope is separated through 3000 massive centrifugal tubes in uraniumhexafluoride form. Process is hazardous, consumes cities of electricity, is inefficient and expensive and so on. Still that sort of cascade produces not much more than 55kg uranium a year. On top of all, now we get to the hot part, it can be totally replaced by a simple mechanism! Let's construct a following apparatus: gas form of uranium, for example, is sprayed like electrons in a kathode ray tube TV-set so that every atom gets subjected to an adjustable laser beam. Precise adjustment is the key, since U-235 and U-238 will lose their valence electron with a slightly different energies. Always only the uranium isotope that has a weaker grip to this electron will be ionized and the one with stronger bound holds the atom together. After that, the substances have a totally different electrical characteristics! All we need is a simple static elecrode to guide the ionized uraniums to another route and voilá! Suddenly we have a suitcase form of isotope separator with stunning efficiency!

 

So what are the differences in ionization energy between the two?

 

And how many atoms could you process per unit time?

[John Cuthber]

There's an article about the idea in wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVLIS

Perhaps the most telling quote is

"In the largest technology transfer in U.S. government history, in 1994 the AVLIS process was transferred to the United States Enrichment Corporation for commercialization. However, on June 9, 1999 after a $100 million investment, USEC cancelled its AVLIS program."

People don't generally cancel things that look like they might work in practice.

 

Anyway the answer to the question is more or less

"the 238U absorption peak shifts from 502.74 nanometers to 502.73 nm in 235U." because you can then use a second laser (that is only absorbed by the excited species) to do the ionisation.

That's a perfectly big difference if you are looking at a laboratory process, but it's a rather small one if you are looking at commercial production.

[swansont]

Anyway the answer to the question is more or less

"the 238U absorption peak shifts from 502.74 nanometers to 502.73 nm in 235U." because you can then use a second laser (that is only absorbed by the excited species) to do the ionisation.

That's a perfectly big difference if you are looking at a laboratory process, but it's a rather small one if you are looking at commercial production.

 

Pretty much as I suspected. I've had discussions with people about using radiation pressure to do isotope separation, but they lose interest when they find that the atomic beams have fluxes of maybe 10⁹ per second. Maybe you can bump that up to 10¹² or even 10¹⁵. That processes a mole in 20 machine-years.

[Styrge]

Why not to try and increase the flux? Why USEC cancelled it's program? It was supposed to be the saviour of nuclear power as it could process nuclear waste into fuel and maybe all the figures and propaganda about fission power were based on that. Now fission doesn't have even a theoretical future. Excavation of uranium is already energy negative.

 

Reason for failure in hyperfine level excitation separation of used nuclear fuel was that isotopes subjected to reactor conditions have charge in their nucleus, enough to mix binding energies. On top of isomers, nuclei can store radiation energy. This obscured issue is in some response of background radiation growth also.

[John Cuthber]

"Why not to try and increase the flux? "

because, if you manage the remarkable increase from 10^9 to 10 ^15/sec, you still only make tiny quantities of stuff.

It's not as if it's easy to raise the flux.

"Why USEC cancelled it's program? "

It didn't work.

"Excavation of uranium is already energy negative."

is an interesting point, but is it true? Do you have any evidence for it?

"Reason for failure in hyperfine level excitation separation of used nuclear fuel was that isotopes subjected to reactor conditions have charge in their nucleus, enough to mix binding energies. "

No it's not. This separation technology is applied to raw uranium that has never been in a reactor.

 

Why ressurect a dead thread to get things dead wrong?

[big314mp]

Am I missing something, because this sounds like a slightly re imagined calutron from the Manhattan project, and that took a long time to produce significant product.

[John Cuthber]

The calutrons worked; this is different.

[Styrge]

Calutron used maybe thousand times the energy for the isotope separation process than this. Now when the laser principle has been invented (or invented 50y ago and now commercialized), increacing the flux even many orders of magnitude is almost mechanical development. And for natural uranium this works, some companies intend to use it. So the reason for the State to cut funding from AVLIS research was failure in tapping waste as a source, I guess.

 

Running out of uranium is needed for that hypothesis to be true. This survey done statistically from the total input and output (so far, without future waste management) of closed nuclear power plants can be summed up that the plant itself consumes half of the total energy prodyced:

http://www.stormsmith.nl/

 

I approached this from the atomic scale and got the result that nuclear fuel excavated in present conditions here in Finland produces approximately ten times more energy than producin it. But I didn't consider any other infrastructure. Easy to imagine it to be ten times more also.

 

http://www.styrge.com/Energiatehokkuus.html (I'll translate this at some point)

 

And because Storm-Smith studied power plants that had their fuel coming from much favorable places, present fission power is likely energy negative.

 

Idea to these investigation came from a study which suggested this energy negativity to take place in 2007. It was made in MIT year 1988, but I haven't been able to find it from the net. Maybe this thread resurrected to bring it forth...

[John Cuthber]

Can you prove this statement "increacing the flux even many orders of magnitude is almost mechanical development."?

[Styrge]

Silex-company claims to make good progress with this. Well, companies can't be trusted but generally even exponential amplification can be achieved after inventing the principle...

 

http://www.silex.com.au/

[John Cuthber]

So, no proof then.

Do you have any experience in maintainig high vacuum systems?

[Styrge]

Not so high... So the technique fails also with this? So, Silex (stated to go commercial 2012 at some point but now I couldn't find that information any more) and apparently the whole uranium into energy industry relied on a bubble. We still have to keep in mind that present enriching systems consume a lot of power (or time) too.