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/sci/ - Science & Math

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2524747 No.2524747 [Reply] [Original]

why do they use heavy water (HDO) in nuclear weapons? what significance do they contribute to the explosion?

>> No.2524751

Its to create neutrons for the implosion to take place

>> No.2524763

>>2524751
oh kk thnx

>> No.2524779

>>2524747
And where does the heavy water go? Not inside the core, but around it? I know beryllium is placed around the core, but where does the water come in? The inner core itself has to be pure uranium or plutonium, right?

>> No.2524800

This thread is now for trolling the NNSA and possibly the FBI about 4chan's supposed knowledge of how to construct a nuclear weapon.

>> No.2524809

>>2524747
It's really not that much of a secret. Most of the papers have been declassified. It's not like any of us have the actual material to make one, just discussing the theory behind it.

>> No.2524838

unenriched uranium in a heavy water reactor makes plutonium

this is easier way to produce weapons grade material than enrichment of uranium

>> No.2524842

Actually,they only use the Deuterium. It is combined with the isotope Lithium-6 and placed into the weapon secondary. Neutrons from the primary react with the Lithium-6 to generate Tritium and Helium. The Deuterium and Tritium then fuse by the standard D-T fusion reaction to generate most of the device energy.

Figuring out how to get Tritium generation and secondary compression and heating to work correctly is left as an exercise for the student.

>> No.2524843

>>2524779
>>2524751
bullshit. see>>2524838

>> No.2524844

implying that it would be a simple matter to get your hands on any radioactive material that could be used to make nuclear warheads without tripping several NSA alarms.

I know how to make a blackhole in theory doesn't mean I will actually be able to do it.

>> No.2524862

>>2524842
That is the fusion device. I was just referring to the fission device. Heavy Water isn't necessary for the fission because it's simply the primary device, isn't it? Not gonna lie, Fusion is harder to do than fission.

>> No.2524865

>>2524844
and how do you make a black hole?

>> No.2524884

>>2524865
inb4 death of Supernova and LHC

>> No.2524894

>>2524865
take any medium size lake and start throwing pebbles into it's very center, it will eventually collapse under the weight of all those pebbles

>> No.2524898

>>2524862

Good point. Reactors are significantly different from weapons. In a reactor fast neutrons from fissions are slowed down by passing them through a moderator,to regulate the reaction rate. Heavy water is used as a moderator in some types of reactors. (Graphite works too). However, in a weapon, the neutrons are not moderated. They cause additional fissions directly, at the fastest rate of increase possible. Unlike a reactor, a weapon is prompt-critical. That's why heavy water may be used in reactors, but not in weapons.

>> No.2524917

>>2524862
for the gun type fission you need uranium 235
The problem is that the amount of it is so small, that you need a huge facility for the sole purpose of extracting it from uranium 238
If you REALLY need a nuclear weapon though I'd just buy it from the black market on the Eastern block and blow the shit out of China and/or Texas

>> No.2524923

Hey guys, I just created a nuclear weapon.

>> No.2524925

>>2524917
The gun type is not as efficient as implosion. The design looks cleaner as well.

>> No.2524982

>>2524925
Yeah but even if someone had plutonium there would be no way an amateur could make one
It needs to be a perfect sphere otherwise the explosion will not be uniform enough to be an implosion

>> No.2525114

>>2524800
GTFO YOU FAGGOT

>> No.2525384

>>2524838
this.

depleted uranium, U-238 (the non-weaponizable isotope or whatever) is more easily turned into plutonium of variable isotopes in heavy water reactors because the U-238 is used to blanket and propagate the fission process (there's more to transmute into Plutonium). Pu can be fashioned as a crude nuclear weapon without enrichment. if hot cell chambers can go undetected, and extraction is conducted, this makes HW reactors more preferred for a clandestine program. couple this with a reactor like the NIKIET style (like in chernobyl. Iran has a reactor like this being installed at Arak) with capabilities to refuel online, and a low burn-up time, and one can quickly amass plutonium for weapons.

it's all about bein' secret, if you're makin' weapons. otherwise you'll have israeli fighter jets fly in close formation to fool radar into perceiving them as an airliner, and they'll get close and use depleted uranium rounds to destroy your shit. i'm not /k/, and im not an expert by any means. this is in places on the web.

>> No.2525434

The really hard part of making fission/fusion weapons is creating a supercritical mass. It's not as simple as packing the materials in explosives and setting off a detonator. The details of making a blast instead of a fizzle are the really classified stuff.

>> No.2525478

>>2525434


this is true. popular culture has always fantasized about what is "classified" by the government and military...


at the end of the day, its all engineering data:

how/what tools/procedures to machine a sphere of fissionable isotope to micron tolerances...

the composition and shape of the shaped explosives used in the implosion trigger on a fission core of a thermonuclear weapon...

the electronics package that times the explosives down to the microsecond to achieve effective critical mass...

detailed specifics of the design, composition, and industrial fabrication of the "fusion mirror" in a thermonuclear warhead...
interestingly enough, some of the stuff has been classified for soo long, and some of it is soo specialized, that many of the people who originally figured out some of this stuff have died...

and the buearacracy and innefficiency of a large government results in ridiculous losses of information...


and when you have to dismantle a nuclear warhead (with a radioactive core, which is constantly undergoing fission, and therefore swelling with daughter nuclides and alpha particles, and ionizing the surrounding via gamma, x-ray, and beta emission)...

sometimes you run into snags...


my dad worked for a company that was using neutrons to detect explosives...

they used a specific type of "switchable" source that uses D2 and T2 fusion, so they had to buy tritium from Oak Ridge National Labs...


while he was there, he said that some of the people were having trouble figuring out how to dismantle some "cold welded" old warheads because the original engineering data on the materials used was lost!

>> No.2525506
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2525506

>>2524800
Protip: Any university worth its salt could build a nuclear bomb if they were given the materials.

>> No.2525508

>>2525434


indeed, the explosive component may be among one of the most classified parts of the design...


from what I know:

1) the shaped explosive is composed of (at least) 2 different explosives (with different burn rates)

one of the explosives is triggered first, and causes the other explosive to "reform"

then the 2nd explosive triggers and this continues the explosion into the correct geometry

2) the shape of (at the least) the entire "core" of the physics package on a modern thermonuclear warhead is NOT spherical (before it explodes)...

it is shaped like a football or elipsoid or whatever...


Not sure if this includes the fissionable core or not, but it definitely includes the explosive surroundings...

3) "aerogel" which is that cool shit they use in space to catch meteorites was actually accidentally discovered through R&D of nuclear weapons in the US...

the Aerogel that they used (which obviously differs from the more recent stuff used by NASA, but was made using the same principle and with similar results) was actually used in relatively early ICBM warheads...


this material was one of the pieces of information I mentioned that was lost by the government over the years.


it gets swollen by alpha damage and caused the "seizing" during the disassembly of the physics package I mentioned above.

>> No.2525529

>>2524800
>>2524800
>>2524800
nonsense. plenty of people who have even moderate secret clearance (which, FYI is incredibly easy to get) knows that WIKIPEDIA has incredibly detailed information on the subject.


this is mindless rabble here.


they are much more concerned about someone synthesizing all of the publicicly available information on the web...
at the end of the day, it doesnt really matter though


1) most of the soviet era fissionable material is so decayed, swollen, and difficult to handle that construction of an effective weapon is questionable at this point

2) purification of isotopes is an extremely intensive industrial process.

it is very very difficult to build centrifuges or gas diffusion processes "quietly"

3) even purchasing an intact nuclear warhead that is still viable from former USSR sources is difficult...


you know how LANL, Oak Ridge, Lawrence-Berkeley, etc are always anouncing new "supercomputers" that they just bought?

you know what a lot of the cpu time is used for?


determining how much of the US' nuclear warheads STILL WORK!


the point of this is: not all 1960s warheads will still even cause a nuclear explosion!

shoddy USSR crap (which is genuinely shoddy in comparison to US stuff) is even less likely for similar era devices.

>> No.2525639

>>2525508
I know this may sound weird, but why a football shape? Is this due to the advancement of the shockwave producing material?
I get that the original devices had cores shaped as truncated icosahedrons broken down into three layers. It would make sense that the shape would change to maximize the yield with less materials and higher velocity "shockwave producing materials"

>> No.2525660

>>2525639


like I said, I am not sure if it is the fissionable core itself, or purely the entire core (including the explosives)


I know for a fact that modern physics packages use AT LEAST 2 different explosives...


so it may be that the Assymmetry is due to the inclusion of more/less of one of the 2 explosives....


in fact, that is probably the case.


more of the faster burning ("higher" explosive), less of the slower burning explosive...


but yeah, definitely DIFFERENT explosive materials...


the kind of "naive" "public" and "simple" idea of a "soccer/football (EU) or volleyball" pattern of explosives is no longer used in modern warheads...

they use a much more complicated geometry of explosive material.

>> No.2525697

GO BACK TO BED AMADJENIDAD

>> No.2525732

>>2525697
Funny. I just am interested in such topics.
>>2525660
Yes, the Geometry is different, but far more complicated. For all intents and purposes, the soccerball would be the basic design that an enemy would use. Especially, if they have limited resources. The burn rates are staggered because the outside core crates a concave implosion. The slow burn is shaped to redirect the implosion into a circular one, which then detonates the final high burn material.

>> No.2525738

>>2525732
Apologies, Spherical*

>> No.2525763

>>2525732


I seriously doubt it. chances are, if someone was going to "rebuild" the physics package from pure fissionable material, or a dismantled/rebuilt physics package from some illict government source...

they would just buy the engineering specs as well.


they would buy the materials, and build it to the original design.


if you are going to spend $50 million on an old USSR nuke, you might as well jump for $60 million and buy the blueprints as well.


and that is "of the order of magnitude" spent by terrorist/criminal organisations on old nukes...

usually it involves massive drug trades (like trading 1-2 tons of heroin ~ $40 million by afghanistani drug producers to Slavic gangs like albanians or chechens)

>> No.2525789

>>2525763
Yes, that is what I mean. They will use the old blueprints, but the spherical design is from the old blueprints.

>> No.2526167

Given the level of security clearance (top secret), the level education required (likely a PhD), and the relatively esoteric field of nuclear weapons construction (relative to other occupations), there cannot be possibly more than 100 people within the United States that know how to correctly build a specific aspect of the atomic bomb.

>> No.2526185

>>2526167


more like 50


and most of them are literally bordering on senile


the US has not built nukes in so long that the 30 year old Ph. D.s in the 1950s and 1960s are now 70.
that is one of the reasons why the US is consider building more nukes.


build them up to modern standards, to ensure:

1) better design

2) easier to dissassemble and repair

3) ensuring that the future defensive (and offensive, lol) stockpile actually still works.
how embarassing would it be if so many of these guys died, that the genuine "first hand" information disappeared...


its no like these guys had diaries explaining all of the intracies of building the bomb...


at a certain point, a blue print and scientific prep is not going to cut it...
you need deeper insight.


the US spent billions on engineering these things, but not enough money on creating secure but extremely detailed notes.

>> No.2526243

>>2526185
I actually had a presentation from one of the workers from the NNSA, about the career field of building nuclear weapons in my first organic chemistry class (which was strange, because I thought that field had more to do with engineering than it had basic science), in which she probably was promoting the field of Nuclear Chemistry.

She presented the field of atomic weapons construction, which made the class VERY awkward, because

1) we had a pacifist professor from JAPAN as our organic chemistry instructor (That, made the conversation VERY awkward) and;

2) All the girls in the class had this distasteful gaze upon the woman (probably in her mid 50's, in concordance with what a poster once said) presenting it and were probably thinking "Fuck no, i'm gonna work for L'Oreal thank you very much".

I lol'ed hard when that happened.

>> No.2526285

>>2526243
Would've been funnier if he was from nagasaki or hiroshima as his hometown.

>> No.2526296

>>2526185
>the US has not built nukes in so long that the 30 year old Ph. D.s in the 1950s and 1960s are now 70.

THIS JUST IN. NOT PRODUCING NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAUSES AGING.

>> No.2526306

>>2526296

fucking lol'ed

>> No.2526338

>>2525506
Protip : any nuclear engineer can build atomic bomb if they were given mats

>> No.2526355

building an atomic bomb is to physicists as synthing meth is to chemists, its like a high school summer project before college, except you leave out the one(or two) key parts/ingredients

>> No.2526357

>>2526338

Completely false.

No normal nuclear engineer is trained to construct the whole of the bomb.

>Protip: Don't post shit without being sure.

>> No.2526363

>>2525478
I love u