Chapter 1191 Rare Elements

Roland picked out a lead box at random, opened the lid, and took the silver-white metal block inside in his hand, feeling its heavy weight - before it was stimulated, it was not much different from a piece of pure iron, as long as it was not put in his mouth Just take a couple of licks and it can be considered basically harmless. If you don't have a deep enough understanding of it, it may be difficult to imagine just by looking at its appearance, how much amazing power it contains within its small body.

It is precisely with it that mankind has touched the threshold of mass-energy transformation for the first time.

Compared with all previous chemical gunpowders, this step can be said to be a new level.

Roland roughly counted the number of lead boxes and found that there were about fifty. Regardless of the weight of the containers, each box contained a kilogram of storage material, which contained a full fifty kilograms of uranium-235, and its purity was close to 100%.

And there is more than one lead cabinet like this in the room.

If you pour them all together...

Maybe the research institute is really "high-powered"?

"How can these things be used to turn them into the "glory of the sun" you mentioned before? Nightingale asked curiously, "Make it a special machine, or set it on fire to detonate it?" I always feel like they can't burn. "

"Want to know?" Roland couldn't help laughing. "It's easier than you think. Just stack the metal blocks in the box together, and they will automatically emit light and heat. The uranium in this cabinet alone , is enough to raze the city of Neverwinter to the ground, so Lucia’s responsibility is very important. If her hand shakes—"

The scene suddenly fell into dead silence.

Lucia covered her mouth with a look of horror in her eyes.

"...No way," Akima said in disbelief after a while, "You mean, if we are not careful, we might destroy the whole city?"

Nightingale even dodged, snatched the lead box from Roland's hand and put it back into the cabinet, then grabbed his hand and dragged it away.

"Hey...wait, what are you going to do?"

"You still have to ask!" Nightingale said urgently, "Of course I will take you out of the city and have these things transported away! Lucia, go inform Wendy and ask her to contact the administrative office!"

"I...I'm also going to find Her Highness Tilly," Azima gritted her teeth, "Only she can summon Maleficent."

"Stop—I was joking—"

There was a sudden uproar in the room, and it took Roland a while to calm everyone down.

"Are you sure you are just joking?" Nightingale asked angrily.

"Ahem, of course... I'm just talking about the principle," he quickly added, "but in fact, it is not that easy to inspire. Even if I try my best, I may not guarantee success."

Lucia breathed a sigh of relief, "Your Majesty... you scared my feet to the point of weakness."

"This is not very funny," Nightingale glared at him, "If Wendy and Shujuan heard this, whether it was a joke or not -"

"I'm afraid everyone will ask for the new research institute to be moved away from Neverwinter City?" Roland said helplessly.

"It's good if you know, or I can move you to a safe place."

"Okay, if I didn't say what I said before..." He cleared his throat, "As long as you don't tell me, Wendy and Shujuan won't know."

"Perhaps some bird has heard it." The nightingale turned towards the window.

"Cut down the message and get a bottle of Chaos Drink." Roland said without hesitation.

"Deal." She blinked and disappeared in front of the three of them.

Looking at Lucia and Akima who were stunned, Roland shrugged, "Uh... don't mind it, this is part of the joke."

After a while, Nightingale returned to the house, "No suspicious target was found, but the reward——"

"Still valid."

Her expression finally softened, and she went to chew dried fish while humming a tune.

"Well... Your Majesty," Akima hesitated for a moment, then said solemnly, "What you said before was not all a joke, was it? Because when formulating the rules, you repeatedly emphasized the need to pay attention to the weight, and in order to confuse You may even measure each lead box accurately at four kilograms, and weigh it together with the container, so as to ensure that the metal blocks loaded into the box are equal to the greatest extent." She paused, "Also , you said that if an accident occurs in the institute, or there are signs that others have broken into, the first thing to do is to notify the guards to seal off the scene, and then report immediately back to the castle, instead of entering the compound to check the situation. This proves that... they do have There’s a certain danger, right?”

Roland looked at her with some surprise, "Good observation. You are basically right - in addition to toxicity, weight is also one of the key factors. This is the purpose of separate placement." The extract can be judged from the rules and regulations. Her nature can be considered cautious and meticulous. It was this carefulness that allowed her to awaken the ability to trace her origins... "But the weight alone can only endanger the research institute. If you want it to be used to deal with devils, Weapons, one more thing is needed.”

"Those particles placed alone?" Akima quickly reacted.

"Not entirely, but at least half right."

The composition of natural uranium ore is very complex. In addition to uranium compounds, it is usually accompanied by many radioactive substances. Most of them are secondary products after decay. Some have completely lost their radioactivity and become stable, while some are still in the long-term. On the way to decay. Although the Radioactive Tribe had preliminarily refined the ore when building the Temple of the Curse, the basic ingredients were still roughly the same - this can be seen from Lucia's refining results.

Among them, uranium-238 is the most abundant. Although it cannot be made into a weapon, it can be recognized by the Ceremony Rubik's Cube. Its effectiveness is almost the same as that of uranium-235, so it was all sent to the backyard of Beipo Mountain.

Next is uranium 235, which can be considered weapons grade when its purity reaches more than 90%. The content in nature is extremely low, accounting for only 1% of natural uranium elements. Therefore, if you want to take the "bright radiation" route, you will encounter the first difficulty. It is refining, and this is a hurdle that most people cannot overcome.

But it is not the rarest - subsequent decay products such as thorium, radium, radon, and polonium are theoretically rarer than the other, and what Roland needs is the naturally occurring polonium-210, which is also a member of the polonium family. The most common isotope.

As a flower of the motherland cultivated in nine years of compulsory education, Roland was familiar with the two elements radium and polonium. Marie Curie, who was mentioned repeatedly in the textbook, was famous in history because of her discovery of them. Although the half-life of polonium-210 is only more than a hundred days, and its content is so low that Marie Curie’s many extractions have failed, she still learned from the powerful radioactivity displayed by the ore solution. , pointing out its existence.

Both radium and polonium can be used to create neutron sources - which is also related to the second difficulty of brilliant radiation: detonation.

The principle of the first generation of nuclear weapons is very simple, even so simple that it can be summarized in one sentence: nuclide fission releases energy. Specific to uranium, after receiving a neutron, uranium-235 will be excited into unstable uranium-236, and then split into two lighter nuclides and more free neutrons. The mass difference between them is, It is converted into energy.

Obviously, the released neutrons will collide with other nuclides, and if the cycle continues like this, it is a chain reaction, and the huge energy burst out at the same time is no different from an explosion.

But in the microscopic world, the gap between atomic nuclei is like an abyss - as written in the textbook, if the atom is regarded as a football field, then the atomic nucleus is just an ant on it. If you are unlucky, the neutron will quickly fly out of bounds and the reaction will stop. To ensure that every ant is hit, it is obviously necessary to pile up enough fields around it to ensure that no matter which direction the neutron flies, there is an ant crossing its path.

Reflected in the macroscopic world, the obvious ones are "quality" and "shape".

In fact, critical mass is not a fixed value, just like pitches lined up in a straight line are obviously less likely to be hit than pitches stacked up. The specific result requires a lot of calculations based on its shape, and Roland also heard an anecdote about someone who miscalculated the data and led to the failure of the war. Of course, as a latecomer standing on the shoulders of giants, he naturally does not have to start from scratch. Countless experiments have proven that when an object is spherical, the critical mass is the smallest, and uranium-235 is fifty-two kilograms.

He was prudent enough by limiting the amount of uranium in each lead box to one kilogram.

But as the saying goes, the critical mass is not fixed. If the area of ​​the stadium can be greatly reduced, or enough extra neutrons are provided for the nuclide, then its critical value will be significantly reduced. The former is the principle of the implosion bomb - the detonating explosive is arranged around the periphery of the bomb body, and when it explodes, the reactants are instantly squeezed into one place, causing its density to increase sharply, thus exceeding the critical point. For the existing technology in Neverwinter, whether it is calculating the critical mass of irregular monomers or accurately controlling the centripetal detonation of explosives, there are too many difficulties, so Roland set his sights on the latter——

Use a neutron source to ensure the continued progress of the fission reaction.

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