Roland picked out a lead box at random, opened the lid, and held 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 into his mouth and licked. A couple of bites can be regarded as basically harmless. If you didn't have a deep enough understanding of it, it would be hard to imagine just looking at the appearance, how amazing the power contained in its small body.
It is by virtue of it that mankind has touched the threshold of quality-energy transformation for the first time.
Compared with all the previous chemical gunpowder, this step can be said to have reached a new level.
Roland roughly counted the number of lead boxes, which were about fifty. Disregarding the self-weight of the container, each box was calculated as one kilogram of storage, and it was a full fifty kilograms of uranium-235, and its purity was close to 100%.
And like this lead cabinet, there is more than one in the room.
If you put them all together...
Maybe the institute is really "high-energy", right
"How do you use these things to turn them into the light of the sun you mentioned earlier?" Nightingale asked curiously, "Make it a special machine, or should it be ignited and detonated? I always think they won'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 , it will be enough to raze Neverwinter to the ground, so Lucia's responsibility is heavy, in case her hand shakes"
The scene suddenly fell into a dead silence.
Lucia covered her mouth with a look of horror in her eyes.
"...No," Akima said in disbelief after a while, "You mean, if you're not careful, we might destroy the whole city?"
Nightingale even jumped, snatched the lead box from Roland's hand and put it back in the cabinet, then grabbed his hand and dragged it out.
"Hey… wait, what are you doing?"
"Why don't you ask!" Nightingale hurriedly said, "Of course I'll take you out of the city, and then let someone transport these things away! Lucia, go and inform Wendy and tell her to contact the Executive Office!"
"I... I'm going to find Her Highness Tilly too," Akima gritted her teeth, "Only she can call the Sleeping Charm."
"stop I'm joking"
There was a sudden turmoil in the room, and it took Roland a long time to calm everyone down.
"Are you sure you're just joking?" Nightingale said in a sullen voice.
"Ahem, of course... I'm just talking about the principle," he added quickly, "but it's not that easy to actually achieve motivation. Even if I try my best, it doesn't necessarily guarantee success."
Lucia breathed a sigh of relief, "Your Majesty... You've scared my feet soft."
"It's not very funny," Nightingale glared at him, "If Wendy and Scroll hear this, it won't matter if it's a joke or not"
"I'm afraid they will all ask to move the new research institute to a place far away from Neverwinter?" Roland said helplessly.
"You know, or move you to a safe place."
"Well, when I didn't say those words before..." He cleared his throat, "As long as you don't say it, Wendy and Scroll will not know."
"Perhaps a certain bird has heard it." Nightingale turned to look out the window.
"Take the message, a bottle of Chaos Drink." Roland said without hesitation.
"Deal." She blinked and disappeared in front of the three.
Looking at Lucia and Akima who were dumbfounded, Roland shrugged, "Uh... don't mind, this is part of the joke."
After a while, Nightingale returned to the house, "No suspicious targets were found, but the reward"
"Still valid."
Her expression finally softened, and she hummed a little tune while chewing on dried fish.
"That... Your Majesty," Akima hesitated before saying solemnly, "What you said before was not all a joke, was it? Because when you formulated the rules, you repeatedly emphasized that you should pay attention to weight, and in order to confuse or If the weight is wrong, you even accurately control each lead box to four kilograms, and it needs to be weighed together with the container, so as to ensure that the metal blocks in the box are equal to the greatest extent." She paused, "Also, You said that if there is an accident in the research institute, or there are signs of someone breaking in, the first thing to do is to notify the guards to block the scene, and then report back to the castle immediately, instead of entering the courtyard to check the situation. This proves... They do have certain Dangerous, 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 placing them separately." The nature of the extract can be judged from the rules and regulations, It can be regarded as careful and meticulous. It is this carefulness that makes her awaken the ability to trace the origin... "But the weight alone can only endanger the research institute. If you want to make it a weapon against the devil, you can also Need something else."
"Those particles placed alone?" Akima responded quickly.
"Not quite, but at least half right."
The composition of natural uranium ore is very complex. In addition to uranium compounds, there are usually many radioactive substances associated with them. Most of them are secondary products after decay. Some have completely lost radioactivity and become stable bodies, while others are still in a long on the way to decay. Although the Radiants initially refined the ore when they built the Temple of the Damned, the basic components are still roughly the same, which can be seen from Lucia's refining results.
Among them, uranium-238 is the most abundant. Although it cannot be used as a weapon, it can be recognized by the ritual cube. Its efficacy is almost the same as that of uranium-235. Therefore, they were all sent to the backyard of Beipo Mountain.
The second is uranium 235, which can be regarded as weapon grade with a purity of more than 90%. The natural content is extremely low, accounting for only 1% of the natural uranium element. Therefore, the first difficulty encountered by the "brilliant radiation" route is 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. In theory, one is rarer than the other, and what Roland needs is the naturally occurring polonium 210, which is also the most common in the polonium family. an isotope of .
As a flower of the motherland cultivated by nine-year compulsory education, Roland is familiar with the two elements radium and polonium. Madame Curie, who is repeatedly mentioned in the textbook, is remembered in the history books because of her discovery. Although the half-life of polonium 210 is only more than 100 days, and its content is so low, that Marie Curie's multiple extractions have failed, but she is still from the strong radioactivity displayed by the ore solution. , indicating its existence.
And both radium and polonium can be used to make 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, and can even be summed up in one sentence: nuclear fission releases energy. Specifically for 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 converted into energy.
Obviously, the released neutrons will collide with other nuclides, and this cycle is a chain reaction, and the huge energy burst at the same time is no different from an explosion.
However, in the microscopic world, the gap between the nuclei is like a sky. As written in the textbook, if the atom is regarded as a football field, then the nucleus is just an ant on it. With bad luck, the neutrons will quickly fly out of bounds and the reaction will stop. To make sure every ant gets hit, you obviously have to build enough ballparks around it to make sure that no matter which direction the neutron flies, an ant is in its path.
Reflected in the macroscopic world, the obvious is mass and shape.
In fact, the critical mass is not a fixed value, just as a straight pitch is obviously less likely to be hit than a stacked pitch. The specific result required a lot of calculations based on its shape, and Roland had also heard an anecdote about a war being lost because someone miscalculated the data. Of course, as a latecomer standing on the shoulders of giants, he naturally does not have to start from scratch. Numerous experiments have proved that when the object is spherical, the critical mass is the smallest, and uranium 235 is 52 kilograms.
He was prudent enough to limit the amount of uranium in each lead box to one kilogram.
But the so-called critical mass is not fixed. If the area of the stadium can be greatly reduced, or enough extra neutrons can be provided for the nuclide, then its critical value will be greatly reduced. The former is based on the principle of implosion bombs. The explosives are arranged on the periphery of the projectile body. When they explode, the reactants are instantly squeezed to one place, causing their density to increase sharply, thus exceeding the criticality. For the existing technology in Neverwinter, whether it is to calculate the critical mass of irregular monomers or precisely control the centripetal detonation of explosives, there are too many difficulties, so Roland set his sights on the latter.
A neutron source is used to ensure that the fission reaction continues. u