🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:27:39 UTC No. 16140672
How did they know it was U-235 that would power a nuclear reactor? There are like a million of different minerals and things, and uranium was a rare and useless one. And then U-235 is like 0.5% of the uranium. So how the fuck did they know to use this random rare substance to power the generators. They would have had to try putting like 1,000,000 different substances into the reactor
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:29:59 UTC No. 16140678
>>16140672
you're excluding two types of of thing by saying every or
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:30:36 UTC No. 16140680
math?
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:36:43 UTC No. 16140686
By counting how many protons and neutrons would be needed for a chain reaction.
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:36:50 UTC No. 16140687
>>16140672
I am not aware of any radioactive ore more abundant than uranium
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:42:43 UTC No. 16140698
>>16140687
how about: bananas
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:45:38 UTC No. 16140701
>>16140672
You are right. Scientists tried a million substances and found uranium was the best for nuclear reactions.
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:48:39 UTC No. 16140703
>>16140686
This
Seems obvious but yeah nuclear physics sort of a niche thing
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 17:43:11 UTC No. 16140783
>>16140698
Sshh, don’t tell them about the banana-powered reactor. Our oil stocks would plummet!
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 18:34:32 UTC No. 16140873
Also they discovered fission in mixed uranium samples first and then realized it was the U-235 isotope in particular that was undergoing fission. They didn't have chain reactions at this point; they were just bombarding the uranium with neutrons from an external source. Here's a contemporary paper which found results suggesting it might be the U-235 isotope and not U-238:
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1103/physrev.
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 18:42:07 UTC No. 16140883
>>16140672
>how did they know that you can get energy from an element which releases energy
come on dude...
Anonymous at Mon, 22 Apr 2024 20:05:29 UTC No. 16141025
>>16140687
Not an ore itself, but there is way more Thorium than Uranium.