Youtube comments of The Atomic Age (@TheAtomicAgeCM).
-
918
-
Hey, all! I've gotten several comments about it so I'm going to clarify. At 4:46, I talk about michaelr19d's comment with 15000 Roentgen. The accuracy of what he said was not in question, but, I did not do a good job explaining that. If the meter is maxed out then, yes, it is not giving an accurate measurement. I used this opportunity to explain the perception I have been getting from several other comments that a meter may be giving the correct exposure of 7000 Roentgen, for example, at some point X, but if you go to point Y, it's even higher. My whole point was to clarify, yes, that is how radiation works and no, that's not how you quantify the amount of radioactivity, i.e., radiation is not equal to radioactivity. Again, michaelr19d was not saying this, but seeing his comment just jogged my memory. I hope this alleviates any confusion!
292
-
230
-
136
-
132
-
118
-
104
-
89
-
77
-
71
-
69
-
59
-
59
-
52
-
50
-
47
-
38
-
35
-
33
-
27
-
27
-
25
-
23
-
22
-
21
-
20
-
19
-
18
-
17
-
16
-
16
-
15
-
12
-
11
-
10
-
10
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
8
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
7
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
6
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
There's a thing in the pressurized water reactor loop called the "pressurizer", which maintains the reactor loop at a constant pressure. It sticks out the top of the reactor loop and it's only partially filled with water, the rest being air (steam). The air, which is very compressible, is there so that any sudden changes in flow or pressure in the reactor loop water has a place to expand into or contract from without bursting pipes. If there weren't that air bubble there, it would be what they called "solid" and a surge in pressure (called a water hammer) could burst the loop open because water is effectively incompressible. If you've ever turned off a water faucet in a house suddenly and heard a bang or a knocking sound, that's from the sudden cut off of flowing water creating a pressure surge (water hammer) and causing your pipes to bang around.
At Three Mile Island, they had a valve stuck open that they thought was closed, so it was able to vent steam out of the loop, lowering the pressure, and making the water level in the pressurizer climb (a scenario for which they had not been trained).
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
Damn, totally forgot to go over that lol. Great question! No bang, unless the heat makes the tanks pop from pressure, for example. It tends to kind of hum along critical or it can get into oscillations where it goes supercritical and subcritical. So, it could start cold, go critical and heat heat up - which tends to make things subcritical, so then it goes subcritical, cools down, and goes critical again, etc. Also, if it's fluid, it can make the fluid jump and that sloshing around can go critical or subcritical depending on temperature, shape, etc. If it's a lidless tank, it could go critical once and slosh out enough fluid to stay subcritical. But either way, the chain reaction puts out a ton of radiation and is very dangerous to be around.
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
5
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
Boiling water is how all big power plants work, how nuclear reactors on ships work, etc. It's one of the most effective ways we know to convert heat to physical momentum to electricity. Water is an amazing fluid, it has one of the largest heat capacities of any liquid, is liquid at room temperature, turns into steam easily to run turbines. A large powerplant can convert 33% of the heat, whether that's an oil- or coal-fired boiler, or nuclear, into electricity, which is about twice as efficient as a car's engine. So, not saying this is you, but anyone who knocks on water as a legitimate thermodynamic working fluid has never studied physics or engineering and is probably a solar panel/wind shill. There's nothing wrong with solar/wind, of course, but they're by no means silver bullets to our climate crisis.
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
For a downside with natural uranium, you can't use light water as a moderator, you need to use graphite or heavy water. Light water absorbs just enough neutrons so that natural uranium can't go critical whereas heavy water and graphite don't have that problem. That makes the moderator more expensive. Light water is very abundant, heavy water and "nuclear grade" graphite need much more processing to create. BUT, you don't have to enrich uranium, which is also expensive. I'm not sure what the cost breakdown of that is though
Without getting too complicated, the RBMK's issue was that the low enrichment paired with the positive void coefficient made it unstable at low power. increasing the enrichment (along with adding more fixed neutron poison) helped to greatly decrease the strength of the positive void coefficient. Trying to put this into an analogy, think of perhaps an underpowered cargo truck when Chernobyl No. 4 was in its low power state. it's going to have to run full throttle and at higher engine speeds more often, really straining it. In No. 4, they were basically at "full throttle" with all the control rods removed trying to get out of that xenon pit. Then imagine the cargo suddenly detached and now the truck is unloaded and accelerates right into the building in front of it. Increasing the enrichment (or the power of our truck) means you don't have to be pushing the reactor that hard in such a situation to get the same effect, making it easier to control.
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
First, let me say thank you for opening this line of questioning without insulting me first lol (we've exchanged comments before, so I wasn't expecting anything less from you just to be clear). Others who have tried to pose this question have been very crass about it. The first major issue is enrichment (we're going to stick with uranium here but it's quite similar with plutonium). You want bombs to be highly enriched because Uranium-238 tends to suck up neutrons and not give you any fissions. Another benefit of high enrichment is a lighter bomb. The RMBK reactor is very low enriched. There have been fission bombs made with somewhat low enriched uranium (20% enrichment seems to be the cutoff point), but the enrichment in the RBMK is too low. The second major issue is all that moderator. Nuclear bombs use fast neutrons - all the neutrons in an RBMK are being moderated and being slowed down greatly (thermalized) - too slow for a nuclear bomb to happen before it blows itself apart. Even if it's prompt supercritical. I work to prevent criticality safety accidents and all of those that have happened are prompt supercritical. But, they don't explode like nuclear bombs. Many criticality safety accidents were moderated but not all - like demon core and such. I suppose in theory, an unmoderated criticality safety accident could get to nuclear bomb levels of power if other parts of physics were put on hold, but something in the real world always interferes - like blowing itself apart or decreasing density via thermal expansion from heat. The main thing is it's always too slow before something changes, neutrons are too slow, it blows itself apart, some liquid splashes out in the case of a fissile solution criticality accident, etc. That's why all nuclear bombs start with a conventional explosion - trying to squeeze the shit out of that fissile material very very quickly - usually by imploding it, and letting a nuclear bomb level of chain reaction happen before it blows itself apart.
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
nonsense! quite a valid question. Yes, they do technically become less effective over time. However, the two materials used, Pu-239 and U-235, have quite long half lives with Pu-239 at 24,110 years and U-235 at 70,000,000 years, so it's more or less irrelevant. The plutonium core from the Trinity Test in 1945 would only have lost about 0.22% of its Pu-239. So, very little but also not insignificant. If the bomb were designed to have just enough Pu-239 for a critical mass, that little bit lost would likely make it no longer work. I'm sure it's something that's controlled for. For a bomb with a half life of 1 year, it would likely not work after just a month or two (having lost 5-10% of the fissile material), maybe even sooner. Once you get below the critical mass the bomb was designed for, there's not much else you can do besides replace the core. Pu-239 is interesting because it decays to U-235, which is fissile. Even though Pu-239 has a much smaller critical mass than U-235, Pu-239 would probably be able to decay more than just the half life would indicate and still work because U-235 would be there.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Well this diagram is only one piece of the puzzle. It's just the absorption cross-section of U-238. I'm just using it to show the fuel temperature coefficient. You would need the other cross-sections of U-238 (scattering, fission, etc), as well as U-235, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Zirconium, etc., to get the full picture. It gets very complicated very quickly, which is why nuclear analyses are almost never done by hand.
Which part needs elaboration about the diagram in particular?
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Nothing is perfect. Are solar panels and wind safe? To users, yes. To people who work on them, not as safe as nuclear. People die falling off roofs and off of wind turbines from maintenance and installation which surpasses those who die from nuclear. The "problem," if you will, with nuclear is like the perception of airplane disasters. More people die in cars than planes each year but each airplane accident is horrific and catastrophic, relatively speaking, and gets all that press attention, etc. If you look at all the numbers, nuclear has killed the least amount of people per energy generated over its history, and the next safest sources, wind and solar, aren't even close. Wind and solar also have energy storage issues. However, I'm not saying wind and solar are bad either, or shouldn't be used. Everything needs to be used together.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
@ApproachDiverging013 Just to be clear, my expertise is nuclear engineering, not nuclear weapons, but as an interested individual, no, a modern nuke isn't more devastating than an older nuke. Nuke sizes if anything have gone down over time because their targeting abilities have improved. They used to be rather big because they weren't as accurate, but if you can more or less guarantee what you're going to hit, the warhead doesn't have to be that big. So, instead of a missile with one big warhead, you can put 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 smaller warheads on a missile, but it's been that way for 40 or so years.
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
you're welcome! and thanks for the kind words, it means a lot.
instead of trying to explain the rate of decay thing, i will point you to my half life video haha that might make it clearer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3B8VWgqFH4. but to sum up, there's just more radioactive atoms at first. after one half life, 50% of the atoms you started with will have decayed to something else. so if you have 10000 radioactive atoms at first, after one half life you have 5000 atoms left, and after another half life, you have 2500 atoms left, then 1250, 625, and so on. so that's half-life. another reason why chernobyl was so radioactive at first is because of fission products. when uranium atoms split, the remnants are highly radioactive lighter atoms called fission products. these have rather short half lives, and all else equal, a shorter half life is more dangerous than a longer half life. it's giving off more radiation energy per second.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
so there's two major concepts at play here: radiation and radioactivity. these get used interchangeably quite often and i'm sure i do it myself sometimes but they are different. put simply, radioactive things emit radiation. so radioactivity is another word for unstable. materials like uranium and plutonium are radioactive, which means they have too much energy. to become stable, they give off radiation (energy). so a way to think of this is that radioactivity is like a lightbulb, and radiation is the light those things give off. however, unlike a lightbulb, you can't "turn off" a radioactive thing. alpha and beta are radiation, so it's not that they get stuck in the glove, just that they lose all their energy trying to get through the glove and basically disappear. but yes, alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper or dead skin cells. beta particles need a bit more "shielding", around a few millimeters of metal. however if some of the radioactive graphite gets on the glove, yes that can get stuck on the glove and continue to give off radiation from the glove. the same can happen if radioactive dust gets on your skin or you breathe it in or accidentally ingest it. hope this clears some stuff up.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Thank you for the kind words! I really appreciate it.
Chemical theory with nuclear materials? Yeah there's a lot of chemistry with nuclear materials. The radioactivity can affect that, I suppose, when something decays - it might not like being bonded to whatever it was bonded to anymore. That sounds really interesting actually lol, I might ask my chemical engineer co-worker about that. My chemistry knowledge is rather tangential, though.
Yes, they knew about half-lives back then. So, I've talked about U-235 and Pu-239 having rather long half lives. I think one could say it was just chance that U-235 and Pu-239 worked out to be suitable materials in terms of half life. It's likely explainable through their proton and neutron numbers (note that all the fissile isotopes I list have an even number of protons and an odd number of neutrons). The two other common fissile isotopes are Uranium-233 and Pu-241. Uranium-233 is made from Thorium-232 and Plutonium-241 is made as (roughly) U-238 -> Pu-239 -> Pu-240 -> Pu-241, so not very efficient to make and it has a ~14 year half life as I talked about in the video, which is too short. So Pu-241 isn't a good candidate and I actually don't know why U-233 isn't really used. There are also some odd-ball, random, exotic fissile isotopes, but U-235 and Pu-239 are the major ones.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
No, I'm saying their deaths are not a foregone conclusion. Also, I'm talking about them in the moment before we know they get cancer (no hindsight) and it's more directed at how the show is depicting it. Cancer isn't a certainty after exposure to ANY amount of radiation, only higher levels. Below a certain threshold of radiation exposure, an increased risk of cancer is not observable. Also, increased rates of cancer means for the same level of exposure, some people will get cancer and some won't. An increased rate is not a certainty. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to be where Legasov and Shcherbina have been this whole time in the show, but, radiation's effect on cancer is a nuanced thing, not black and white.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
I'll have to take a look at that Scott Manley video. So, prompt critical doesn't mean nuclear bomb, it just means prompt critical. Nuclear bombs are prompt critical, but a nuclear bomb is very hard to achieve, as you stated. There have been several nuclear chain reaction accidents (things I work directly to prevent) in history that went prompt critical, but they didn't turn into bombs. That Xenon paper does seem very plausible. However, not to sound accusatory, but no one ever seems to read the footnote for it (so I'm kind of upset at the authors for allowing this nuclear explosion language to propagate, but it is hard to find succinct words to explain what happened). The footnote reads: "This nuclear explosion concept must not be confused with a nuclear bomb as the two differ considerably in their principles of operation, neutronics, released energy, and temperatures involved." So, the nuclear explosion they're describing is like how a pipe bomb or black powder or something would explode. A massive amount of energy is released in a pressure-retaining vessel and then the pressure vessel ruptures and that energy suddenly escapes with violent force. If you just ignited some black powder on the ground, it wouldn't be nearly as speculator or "explosive" as if it were contained in a cannon to propel a cannon ball. So, the release of nuclear energy caused something to heat up and then it caused a pressure vessel to rupture, so it's like a pressure cooker or hot water heater explosion. I think nuclear explosion should be reserved for nuclear bombs. I'm not a Chernobyl expert or historian so I'm not familiar with all the literature, but the original explanation for the first explosion I know is that the power surge caused fuel to shatter, which sent extremely hot fuel into the water channels, instantly vaporizing that water into steam and causing a steam explosion.
1
-
1
-
so when you're getting IRRADIATED (I'm not yelling at you, just capitalizing for emphasis because a lot of these terms are improperly treated synonymously), it's like standing in the sun. RADIATION is passing through you - IRRADIATION. this does not make you RADIOACTIVE. once you're away from the danger, damage has been done to your cells, but you are not RADIOACTIVE. much of the produce we eat is treated this way with UV radiation to kill parasites and mold, etc, and increase its shelf life. RADIOACTIVE material gives off RADIATION. This damages your cells, specifically their DNA, and inhibits cell division. it does not make your cells RADIOACTIVE.
When you get CONTAMINATED with RADIOACTIVITY, it's either external or internal contamination. so external is on your skin, hair, clothes whereas internal you either ingested it or breathed it in. external you can wash off, take the clothes off. But with internal contamination, RADIOACTIVE material is now inside your body continuously giving off RADIATION until your body is able to expel it, if it can. This does not have to be in large amounts to do a lot of damage to you since it's continuously there and you cannot get away from it. It's not too much of a concern to the people around you (I'd have to look up some numbers to see what kind of internal contamination people can get). The only time naturally present things in your body could become RADIOACTIVE is perhaps if you've stood too close to a neutron chain reaction and some isotopes in your body became ACTIVATED into RADIOACTIVE isotopes via neutron activation, however, you have much bigger problems at that point having been that close to the extreme radiation of a neutron chain reaction. Hope this helps!
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Alpha, beta, gamma, or neutron? I would say gamma. Most people won't experience unshielded alphas, betas, or neutrons in their lives. If the radioactive material is in a metal container, basically no alphas or betas will penetrate that container. Neutrons generally only occur with spent fuel, which is a rare thing to be around. But, if you're seeing any kind of radioactive material package going down the road, the primary dose concern will be gamma rays the vast majority of the time. But other than that, it is quite situation-dependent.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
it depends on the kind of radiation. the vast majority of the radiation being dealt with when you have shielding materials like lead being used is gamma radiation, which doesn't make things radioactive. neutron radiation can make things radioactive via a process called activation, but neutron radiation is generally not that prolific - you tend to only see it around nuclear reactors. when people in this show become radioactive, the vast majority of that, if not all of it, is from radioactive contamination, so uranium dust, etc, has gotten on them or in them. just standing in an area of high intensity radiation, assuming no contamination, would not make you radioactive.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Hello there. Yes, the spent fuel can be reprocessed (there's still some Uranium fuel in spent fuel and there's also some Plutonium fuel) and it can be used in a reactor again. The US doesn't do this presently, but the UK, France, and Japan do (maybe Russia as well). Regarding uranium ammo, the U.S. military uses uranium as ammo but there is a very important difference here: they used DEPLETED URANIUM (I'm using caps for emphasis, I don't mean to sound angry lol). Depleted uranium has had the vast majority of the fuel part of uranium (Uranium-235) removed and is almost exclusively Uranium-238, which has very very low radioactivity, and more importantly, depleted uranium has never been in a reactor. SPENT FUEL has been in a reactor and is very radioactive and very dangerous, it would not make good ammo at all because it would give the operators immense amounts of dangerous radiation. This is a problem with the names of these terms - Depleted Uranium and Spent Fuel sound very similar because Depleted and Spent are synonyms. So a better way to refer to Spent Fuel may be Irradiated Fuel or Used Fuel, but Spent Fuel is a valid way to refer to it.
1
-
You're welcome! Glad to hear I could help. You got the basics in your explanation right, just switch the 235 and the 238 in your explanation. So, 'depleted uranium' refers to uranium where the fuel (fissile material), uranium-235, has been removed. This is known as uranium enrichment. The uranium-235 can now be used in reactors or nuclear bombs. What's left is almost entirely uranium-238, which is not fuel. This is known as depleted uranium (DU). DU is the waste product of uranium enrichment. It's still radioactive, not as much as uranium-235, but this is relatively speaking. Uranium is not very radioactive overall (it gets complicated, but the amount of radioactivity doesn't determine a material's usefulness as a nuclear fuel).
So the uranium used in ammo is DU, which is not fuel - so, it's basically worthless. You could put it in a reactor to make plutonium, but by itself, DU is basically worthless to the nuclear industry in the United States. However, DU makes a good penetrator for ammunition. Tungsten is quite similar to DU and it isn't radioactive, but it is a lot more expensive than DU. So, because there's a lot of worthless DU being stored, it makes sense to use it for penetrating ammunition.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1