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How things work: Article World Arms Race
How the atomic bomb works
Judging by the publications in the press, especially in the West, uranium and plutonium in Russia is lying in every landfill.
I donot know, I havenot seen it myself, but maybe it's lying around somewhere.
But the question is whether a certain terrorist can, having a kilogram..
well, or 100 kilograms of uranium to build something explosive out of it?
So, how does the atomic bomb work?
We remember the school physics course.
An explosion is the release of a large amount of energy in a short period of time.
Energy arises from the decay of the nucleus of an atom.
Uranium or plutonium atoms are unstable, and slowly tend to fall apart into atoms of lighter elements, while extra neutrons fly away and a certain amount of energy is released There is also a half life - a kind of statistical value, a period of time during which about half of the atoms from a certain mass will "fall apart".
That is, the uranium lying in the ground gradually ceases to be such, heating the surrounding space.
The decay process can be triggered by a neutron flying into the atom, which has flown out of a recently collapsed atom.
But a neutron can hit an atom, or it can fly past.
The logical conclusion is that the atoms would fall apart more often, it is necessary that there would be more of them around, that is, that the density of the substance would be large at the moment when it is necessary to organize an explosion.
Do you remember the concept of "critical mass"?
This is the amount of matter when there are enough neutrons flying out spontaneously to cause a chain reaction That is ,there will be more" hits "into atoms at any given time than" destructions" Let's take several pieces of subcritical mass Uranium and combine them into one block of supercritical mass.
And then there will be an explosion.
Fortunately, everything is not so simple, the question is how exactly the connection takes place.
If you bring two subcritical pieces closer to a certain distance, they will begin to warm up from the exchange of outgoing neutrons with each other.
The decay reaction from this increases and there is an increasing release of energy.
If we bring them closer even more, they will become red hot
Then it turned white.
Then they will melt.
The melt, approaching the edges, will begin to warm up further and evaporate, and no heat removal or cooling will be able to prevent melting and evaporation, the energy reserves in Uranium are too large.
Therefore, as pieces do not bring together by household methods, they will melt and evaporate any device that performs this rapprochement before they connect, and they will evaporate themselves, scattering, expanding, moving away from each other and then only cooling down, because they will be at an increased mutual distance.
It is possible to make the pieces into one supercritical one only by developing such huge speeds of convergence that the increase in the density of the neutron flux will not keep up with the convergence of the pieces.
This is achieved at convergence speeds of about 2.5 km per second.
That's when they will have time to get into each other before they warm up from the energy release And then the subsequent energy release will be so peak that a nuclear explosion with a mushroom will occur.
It is impossible to disperse gunpowder to such speeds – the size of the bomb and the acceleration paths are small.
Therefore, they are dispersed with explosives, combining "slow" and "fast" explosives, because immediately "fast" explosives will cause the destruction of a piece by a shock wave.
But in the end, they get the main thing – they ensure the speed of transferring the system to a supercritical state before it collapses in a thermal way due to the growing heat release during convergence Such a scheme is called "cannon", because subcritical pieces "shoot" towards each other, managing to connect into one supercritical piece and then release the power of an atomic explosion in a peak way.
It is extremely difficult to implement such a process in practice - you need the right selection and a very accurate match of thousands of parameters This is not an explosive that explodes in many cases Simply, the detonators and charges in the bomb will be triggered, and the practical power allocated will not be observed, it will be extremely low with a very narrow zone of active explosion Microsecond accuracy of triggering a large number of charges is required.
The stability of atomic matter is necessary.
Remember, after all, that in addition to the initiated decay reaction, there is also a spontaneous, probabilistic, process That is, the assembled bomb gradually changes its properties over time That is why there is a distinction between a weapon grade atomic substance and one that is not suitable for creating a bomb Therefore, they do not make atomic bombs from reactor plutonium, because such a bomb will be too unstable and dangerous for the manufacturer rather than for a potential enemy The process of separating atomic matter into isotopes is extremely complex and expensive in itself, its implementation is possible only in serious nuclear centers
And this pleases.
Alexey Shestopalov, Internet project " How things work"
See also: How does a dirty atomic bomb work How does the eye Chemical elements work The Periodic system of chemical elements of D. I. Mendeleev How does a shot noise silencer work How does a neutron bomb work What do paints make of What can happen in the event of a shootout in an airplane?
How does Agent Orange work?
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