|
 Diploid
Cuban
Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 18,293
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
 Homemade Uranium Enrichment 
#10044948 - 03/26/09 12:32 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Uranium enrichment required to produce weapons-grade uranium is a v-e-r-y difficult thing to do. That's why only large governments can do it. The process involves transforming the solid uranium into a gas by a simple chemical reaction that sticks six fluoride atoms onto one uranium atom. The resulting gas is uranium hexafluoride (UF6). That's the easy part.
The hard part is separating UF6 molecules with uranium atoms containing 146 neutrons (the kind that that's useless for bombs) from the the ones with 143 neutrons (the fissile kind that goes boom).
The most technically simple way to do this is to take advantage of the extremely tiny difference in the weight of the two types of uranium atoms caused by the three neutron difference. This is done by spinning the UF6 gas in a gas centrifuge at astonishingly high RPM in the hundreds of thousands and so generating millions of g-force. The heavy molecules fly outward in the centrifuge and the light ones stay closer to the axis.
Up until now, this required special maraging steel which is about the only material strong enough to withstand the enormous forces. The centrifuge had to be machined to extreme precision and balance, and spun in a vacuum to reduce air drag. The whole thing had to be suspended on magnetic levitation bearings. And these are just some of the technical challenges that have to be solved to enrich uranium.
Well, I just bought one of these for a radio-control airplane:
http://www.robart.com/FunSonic/FS70.aspx
I've been playing with it for the last couple of days and find that it operates at a nominal 170,000 RPM without breaking a sweat. That generates on the order of nearly 2 million g-force at the outer edge of the rotor; enough to effectively separate uranium.
I don't think too many terrorists are into playing with RC airplanes, but it seems like only a matter of time before some nutjob discovers that amateur jet engines can be modified to solve one of the hardest technical challenges to making an atomic bomb.
We live in a scary world...
--------------------
"The axioms for a group are short and natural... Yet somehow hidden behind these axioms is the monster simple group, a huge and extraordinary mathematical object, which appears to rely on numerous bizarre coincidences to exist. The axioms for groups give no obvious hint that anything like this exists." -- Richard Borcherds
If there is a creator, he definitely has a sense of humor.
|
 fireworks_god
SexyButt McDanger
Registered: 03/12/02
Posts: 24,244
Loc: Red Panda Village
Last seen: 4 hours, 21 minutes
|
 Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10045388 - 03/26/09 01:59 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
And with that post, we never saw Diploid again.... 
We need a black helicopter emoticon. 
--------------------
  
 
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
  
 
|
Gumby
Fishnologist
Registered: 06/13/01
Posts: 25,913
Loc: BRICK CITY, NIGGA! 
Last seen: 1 hour, 31 minutes
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10045613 - 03/26/09 02:28 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
How fast will an RC airplane with a 170,000rpm jet engine go?
|
Seuss
Error: divide byzero
Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,394
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 4 months, 3 days
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10045701 - 03/26/09 02:39 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
I'm not too worried. UF6 based chemistry is pretty nasty. Purity is important, and can be difficult to achieve. You also have to go both ways, solid to gas, then gas back to solid. UF6 is also very reactive and will eat most metals. Granted, nickle plating isn't too difficult, but all of the fittings, valves, etc have to be corrosion proof as well. It would take a fairly large cascade to get much volume, and even then it would take a long time to get any appreciable enrichment. Once the terrorist figure out how to do laser isotope separation (MLIS or AVLIS), then I will begin to worry.
--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.
|
Visionary Tools
I <3 Thomas Jefferson
Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 6,758
Last seen: 3 hours, 44 minutes
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Seuss]
#10046141 - 03/26/09 03:50 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Yuck, where are you going to get fluorine gas from?
If I was going to do terrorism, and I'm not, I'd go the biological route. Say for example, contaminating flu vaccines with HN51 avian flu, letting people incubate it and disseminate it around.
It's far more likely the terrorists will use a biological attack than nukes.
--------------------
Wiccan_Seeker said:
slide down a pole than with your legs spread and using your pussy as a brake. Ask the fire department 
|
Gumby
Fishnologist
Registered: 06/13/01
Posts: 25,913
Loc: BRICK CITY, NIGGA!
Last seen: 1 hour, 31 minutes
|
|
That'd be a good plan, but H5N1 doesn't spread person-to-person... Yet.
It only spreads from bird-to-person and bird-to-bird.
|
Visionary Tools
I <3 Thomas Jefferson
Registered: 06/23/07
Posts: 6,758
Last seen: 3 hours, 44 minutes
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Gumby]
#10046320 - 03/26/09 04:15 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Gumby said:
That'd be a good plan, but H5N1 doesn't spread person-to-person... Yet.
It only spreads from bird-to-person and bird-to-bird.
Until someone mutates HN51 with a more contagious influenza virus. I wonder what would happen if someone had both infections simultaneously?
--------------------
Wiccan_Seeker said:
slide down a pole than with your legs spread and using your pussy as a brake. Ask the fire department
|
Diploid
Cuban
Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 18,293
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
|
where are you going to get fluorine gas from?
Fluorine is available commercially. You need special equipment and skills to handle it, but someone with enough money (read: Osama bin Ladin) should be able to get it from one of the many unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers.
Also, Hydrofluoric acid is commonly available commercially. It's used to etch glass. I don't know how hard it would be to get the fluorine out, but it's another potential source. It's in many common refrigerants too, and even in teflon.
--------------------
"The axioms for a group are short and natural... Yet somehow hidden behind these axioms is the monster simple group, a huge and extraordinary mathematical object, which appears to rely on numerous bizarre coincidences to exist. The axioms for groups give no obvious hint that anything like this exists." -- Richard Borcherds
If there is a creator, he definitely has a sense of humor.
|
Mr. Bojangles
Breathe In
Registered: 04/08/08
Posts: 1,566
Loc: The Dirty
Last seen: 17 hours, 14 minutes
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10046653 - 03/26/09 05:09 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Also, Hydrofluoric acid is commonly available commercially. It's used to etch glass. I don't know how hard it would be to get the fluorine out, but it's another potential source. It's in many common refrigerants too, and even in teflon.
You can get the flouride ion by adding hydrofluoric acid to water, but I'm not sure the state of the atom.
Or they could just add hydrogen fluoride to some antimony pentafluoride and have a ball throwing it on people/putting it in explosives/doing whatever else you can think of doing to cause harm with a superacid.
--------------------
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."
-Fracois Marie Voltaire
Edited by Mr. Bojangles (03/26/09 05:10 PM)
|
Seuss
Error: divide byzero
Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,394
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 4 months, 3 days
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10047496 - 03/26/09 07:18 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
> Also, Hydrofluoric acid is commonly available commercially.
Hydrofluoric acid (hydrogen fluoride, actually) with uranium oxide will produce uranium tetrafluoride (a solid) and water (when combined at a high temperature).
--------------------
Just another spore in the wind.
|
cortex
[ H ] ψ = [ E ] ψ
Registered: 10/08/02
Posts: 15,158
Loc: Gedankenexperiment
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10061602 - 03/28/09 08:52 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
 good luck!!!
--------------------
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift for which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research -- EUGENE P WIGNER
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose -- J.B.S. HALDANE
|
CH HELL
Brain Sturgeon
Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 6,453
Loc: mars
|
Re: Homemade Uranium Enrichment [Re: Diploid]
#10061866 - 03/28/09 09:31 PM (4 years, 2 months ago) |
|
|
Just make it easier for them Diploid. 
|
|
Images only 
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Edit 
Reply 
Anonymous
