Super Uranium... Would Physics Allow For It?

[Spacescifi]

Imagine unobtanium packed  with 100x the potential energy of the uranium we use for nuclear power. Would physics even allow for such an element to exist?

If so... where? A planet orbiting a blue giant (better mine it and run before the blue star goes nova in a few millenia lol).

Or... provided we had a scifi machine that could force or compact any element together im any state, would that allow for creating super uranium that is 100x more powerful?

 

If so... what would be it's properties?

Assumptions: More radioactive... meaning suit up in a protective suit to even mine it, and especially if you are going to use it in any sort reactor.

Edited May 31 by Spacescifi

[Shpaget]

Something like antimatter?

Also, hydrogen is about then times more energy dense than uranium.

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

physics

Per some certain knowledge of the Periodic Table it is a given that the higher the atomic number, the less likely the given element is to even want to exist if synthesized, let alone occur naturally so forget about finding it in the wild. Fortunately, there is a thing called the Island of Stability where "Super Uranium" can possibly exist -- certain atomic numbers are predicted to be stable.

There is a certain balance and two extremes to keep in mind when considering anything that is "powerful." These extremes are:

• Specific Energy: The energy density. How much total energy per unit of mass or volume can be extracted.
• Specific Power: The impulse. How quickly it charges or discharges per unit time.

A fissile material with great sepcific energy has a longer half-life and a slower release rate is safer or more tolerable. A fissile material with great specific power has a shorter half-life and a faster release rate and is increasingly deadly. I would expect such a substance to have an extreme weight (like 2x Lead), to have a "generous" half life of only a year and it would pour out enough gammas to visibly ruin any material and environment within a few hundred meters (in atmosphere) of an unshielded sample and within a few hours of existing.

From what I've been told and what I learned for myself we'd only really use this Super Uranium in giant reactors that could power whole continents or for torch drives for huge space colonies like in the Gundam anime metaverse.

As for producing this Super Uranium it's anyone's guess. Whatever plausible device you might be able to think of that can produce this would need to be able to withstand the combined energy released by the newly formed sample's radioactivity and the energy of fusion at the moment of production. I imagine that this foundry, this production device, wouldn't last long if were to make respectable amounts of the stuff.

 

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

potential energy

That all said... We don't have so much need for a better fissile resource as we have need for nuclear reactors that can use it better. Current reactors use < 1% of their fuel rods, and in turn, produce other fissiles that we don't have the technology to make use of at all so we treat that as waste.

[DDE]

@Spacescifi has purchased Helldivers II and is now putting "super" in front of everything. For Superearth, of course.

[JadeOfMaar]

3 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Something like antimatter?

Also, hydrogen is about then times more energy dense than uranium.

The question might be specifically trying to dodge the need for fusion processes. Unfortunately for the OP, I'm quite certain there's no dodging fusion tech.

[Spacescifi]

35 minutes ago, JadeOfMaar said:

Per some certain knowledge of the Periodic Table it is a given that the higher the atomic number, the less likely the given element is to even want to exist if synthesized, let alone occur naturally so forget about finding it in the wild. Fortunately, there is a thing called the Island of Stability where "Super Uranium" can possibly exist -- certain atomic numbers are predicted to be stable.

There is a certain balance and two extremes to keep in mind when considering anything that is "powerful." These extremes are:

• Specific Energy: The energy density. How much total energy per unit of mass or volume can be extracted.
• Specific Power: The impulse. How quickly it charges or discharges per unit time.

A fissile material with great sepcific energy has a longer half-life and a slower release rate is safer or more tolerable. A fissile material with great specific power has a shorter half-life and a faster release rate and is increasingly deadly. I would expect such a substance to have an extreme weight (like 2x Lead), to have a "generous" half life of only a year and it would pour out enough gammas to visibly ruin any material and environment within a few hundred meters (in atmosphere) of an unshielded sample and within a few hours of existing.

From what I've been told and what I learned for myself we'd only really use this Super Uranium in giant reactors that could power whole continents or for torch drives for huge space colonies like in the Gundam anime metaverse.

As for producing this Super Uranium it's anyone's guess. Whatever plausible device you might be able to think of that can produce this would need to be able to withstand the combined energy released by the newly formed sample's radioactivity and the energy of fusion at the moment of production. I imagine that this foundry, this production device, wouldn't last long if were to make respectable amounts of the stuff.

 

That all said... We don't have so much need for a better fissile resource as we have need for nuclear reactors that can use it better. Current reactors use < 1% of their fuel rods, and in turn, produce other fissiles that we don't have the technology to make use of at all so we treat that as waste.

 

So the millon dollar question is what would a reactor have to do or be to use 99% or even 70% of the fuel rods as energy?

What? Nuke it lol?

Something something really hot like fusion lol?

I say it jokingly but I am genuinely curious.

Edited May 31 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Antiuranium. It reacts with uranium pretty well.

[darthgently]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

@Spacescifi has purchased Helldivers II and is now putting "super" in front of everything. For Superearth, of course.

"If everything is super, nothing is super"

-- twisted paraphrase from The Incredibles

[Hannu2]

Antimatter is on same order of magnitude. Any element, including speculated supermassives, can not be even near.

 

[Kerbart]

11 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

So the millon dollar question is what would a reactor have to do or be to use 99% or even 70% of the fuel rods as energy?

The problem is that uranium decays in the fissile process, so your rods no longer contain the 5% ²³⁵U that is needed (or whatever, I'm not a Nuclear Physicist™) and are no longer fit for the production of energy. If there's magical way to remove the decayed elements you could continue fission until everything is used up.

[Hannu2]

11 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

So the millon dollar question is what would a reactor have to do or be to use 99% or even 70% of the fuel rods as energy?

As far as I know low utilization is practical thing.  4 % enriched uranium is cheap and there is no economic reason to use it effectively . It would be technically possible to build reactor to use higher enriched uranium and use larger part of it or even breed non fissile isotopes to fissile but such a tech is internationally and politically very problematic because it would give rapid way to build nuclear weapons.

Used fuel is recycled and reprocessed to usable nuclear fuel (MOX fuel) in some countries. I do not know is it purely business thing or has it some military or political reasons.

[Terwin]

1 hour ago, Hannu2 said:

Used fuel is recycled and reprocessed to usable nuclear fuel (MOX fuel) in some countries. I do not know is it purely business thing or has it some military or political reasons.

Previously the US had a 'fast breeder reactor'(I think the navy had it) that could take 'used' nuclear fuel and re-enrich it.  Unfortunately, this process also creates Plutonium, which is a proliferation risk, so that type of reactor is strictly controlled.

Considering that NASA cannot get their hands on any new plutonium, I suspect no one is 'allowed' to have that sort of reactor, meaning the most cost-effective thing to do with 'spent' fuel rods is bury them and buy new ones.  (or store them under water while waiting on a place where you can bury them)

[Nuke]

so island of stability elements. there are some caveats. the would all need to be manufactured one atom at a time using an extremely complicated process. we do not know the characteristics of these theoretical elements, half lives, etc. they will probably be short and therefor really nasty.  they would greatly reduce the amount of material needed for a nuclear weapon. i dont think they would be suitable for reactors, as conventional nuclear fuels are more readily available and easier to work with.  you still could use it for that though. because it would need to be manufactured at great expense, it is in the same boat as antimatter, an exotic form of energy storage.

[DDE]

4 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

Used fuel is recycled and reprocessed to usable nuclear fuel (MOX fuel) in some countries. I do not know is it purely business thing or has it some military or political reasons.

MOX fuel seemed to take off largely as a way for weapons plutonium disposal. When the US backed out of using MOX reactors for it around 2016, there was quite the brouahaha.

NASA uses entirely different plutonium, though.

[Nuke]

3 hours ago, Terwin said:

Previously the US had a 'fast breeder reactor'(I think the navy had it) that could take 'used' nuclear fuel and re-enrich it.  Unfortunately, this process also creates Plutonium, which is a proliferation risk, so that type of reactor is strictly controlled.

Considering that NASA cannot get their hands on any new plutonium, I suspect no one is 'allowed' to have that sort of reactor, meaning the most cost-effective thing to do with 'spent' fuel rods is bury them and buy new ones.  (or store them under water while waiting on a place where you can bury them)

part of the reason for water storage is to let the really nasty stuff with short half lives decay. leaving only the long half life stuff, then transition to long term dry storage.

[Spacescifi]

*mouth waters* But... what if an engineered and constructed form of uranium had 1000× more energy capacity than normal uranium?

We got naquadah boys! Lol.

I do find it both informative and amusing  that if real life super energetic unobtanium existed it would be deadly to to even be nearby let alone handle, as you would need radiation protection at all times.

 

Edited May 31 by Spacescifi

[Kerbart]

Imagine there was a chemical that would yield 100,000× the energy of regular gasoline when it's mixed with (an equal amount) of oxygen?

I mean, why not imagine it?

[panarchist]

18 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

So the millon dollar question is what would a reactor have to do or be to use 99% or even 70% of the fuel rods as energy?

What? Nuke it lol?

Something something really hot like fusion lol?

I say it jokingly but I am genuinely curious.

It would need to block all neutrons from leaving the reactor, and it would need to be able to convert all the heat into more useful forms of energy while remaining 100% insulated from its supports and everything else around it. (For 99% efficient) For 70% efficient, keep all the above but allow the reactor to bleed heat through its surroundings (but not too much heat). It's converting the heat into useful energy that's the real trick, since you're then trying to decrease entropy.

5 hours ago, Terwin said:

Previously the US had a 'fast breeder reactor'(I think the navy had it) that could take 'used' nuclear fuel and re-enrich it.  Unfortunately, this process also creates Plutonium, which is a proliferation risk, so that type of reactor is strictly controlled.

Close - Argonne National Laboratory, which is part of the Idaho National Laboratory complex. The Naval Reactors Facility is part of the same complex but a separate entity. There have been / are 23 breeder reactors. 6 were US but none currently operate. The only 2 active commercial breeders are in Russia. India is developing one.

[Spacescifi]

16 minutes ago, panarchist said:

It would need to block all neutrons from leaving the reactor, and it would need to be able to convert all the heat into more useful forms of energy while remaining 100% insulated from its supports and everything else around it. (For 99% efficient) For 70% efficient, keep all the above but allow the reactor to bleed heat through its surroundings (but not too much heat). It's converting the heat into useful energy that's the real trick, since you're then trying to decrease entropy.

Close - Argonne National Laboratory, which is part of the Idaho National Laboratory complex. The Naval Reactors Facility is part of the same complex but a separate entity. There have been / are 23 breeder reactors. 6 were US but none currently operate. The only 2 active commercial breeders are in Russia. India is developing one.

Scifi Engineer: "Ah.... entropy, my nemesis! We meet again... for the last time!"

Entropy: "What are you smoking? I've always been. Always will be. You on the other hand..."

Scifi Engineer: "Bring it on! Time to meet your maker or... efficiency or....  something. Whatever! I'm taking you down!"

Entropy: *rolls eyes*

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

what if an engineered and constructed form of uranium had 1000× more energy capacity than normal uranium?

Then it would release 17.5 Mt/kg ~= 7.35*10¹⁶ J/kg, which gives 1.3 c of velocity if treat it as kinetic energy, so it would be as effective as the antiuranium.

[K^2]

On 5/30/2024 at 9:07 PM, Shpaget said:

Something like antimatter?

100x Uranium is almost exactly antimatter. 

You can, of course, also just "burn" normal matter in a black hole, but that does come with... challenges.

[Hannu2]

15 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

*mouth waters* But... what if an engineered and constructed form of uranium had 1000× more energy capacity than normal uranium?

We got naquadah boys! Lol.

I do find it both informative and amusing  that if real life super energetic unobtanium existed it would be deadly to to even be nearby let alone handle, as you would need radiation protection at all times.

 

If such material was so radioactive or othervise dangerous and expensive, probably nothing generally significant would happen. As far as I know there are not applications in which low energy to mass ratio of normal fissile materials  is bottleneck. It is easy to load enough uranium to reactor to run large ship few decades. Suitable cooling and safety systems and systems to convert heat to usable energy would be as large as now and there would not be nuclear planes, spacecrafts, cars etc. in near future. Mass of nuclear weapons are mostly chemical explosives to implode fissile material and safety systems so there would not be pocket sized atomic bombs. It is also hard  to see than any army would be willing to take risks compared to modern suitcase atomic bombs.

[Hannu2]

16 hours ago, Nuke said:

so island of stability elements. there are some caveats. the would all need to be manufactured one atom at a time using an extremely complicated process. we do not know the characteristics of these theoretical elements, half lives, etc. they will probably be short and therefor really nasty.  they would greatly reduce the amount of material needed for a nuclear weapon. i dont think they would be suitable for reactors, as conventional nuclear fuels are more readily available and easier to work with.  you still could use it for that though. because it would need to be manufactured at great expense, it is in the same boat as antimatter, an exotic form of energy storage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy#Semiempirical_formula_for_nuclear_binding_energy

If you look the graph of  estimated nuclear binding energy per nucleon around Z 120-130 (where island of stability is expected to be) (about 6 MeV), it is not much smaller than binding energy of typical fissile elements of uranium or plutonium (about 7 MeV). Energy released in fission is from difference of binding energy of fissile nucleus and tighter bound daughter nucleii. Released energy per mass unit of superheavy elements would not be significantly larger than typical uranium or plutonium isotopes. I have read that estimated densities of those elements in metallic state is about 40000 kg/m^3. That would give somewhat smaller nuclear bomb cores but probably not anything like pocket size nukes.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Hannu2 said:

Mass of nuclear weapons are mostly chemical explosives to implode fissile material and safety systems so there would not be pocket sized atomic bombs.

That's not so long ago. (Since late 1950s).

You should not compress the whole nuka-ball. You should just slap its shell to make it slap the less-than-kg sparkplug (and sometimes the inert betatronesque sphere around it to force the Xray emission), it gets slightly supercritical and ignites the puny amount of gaseous D+T inside, and then the staged process of fusion-fission-fusion-fission runs even without critical mass of the charge in whole.
You need just several kg of the chemexplosives for that (thanks to the Pu's delta-alpha crystal phase transition).
Also, usage of U/Pu deuteride helps since the Ray&Ruby nuka-tests.

If you have enough purified Pu, you can make a briefcase-sized linear (gun-type) charge of at least two schemes.
But it's very expensive, as you have to take the Pu very early from the reactor, before it's filled wth super-active parasite isotopes, and then expose it for a decade to let them decay.

But there is no problem about ten-kg nukes, except their cost and applicability in whole.

The main safety system of them is their tritium addiction. Hard to create, easy to burn out.

Actually, you couldn't make a simple nuke out of a normally designed nuke. It doesn't contain the critical mass of isotopes.

  

49 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

I have read that estimated densities of those elements in metallic state is about 40000 kg/m^3.

Wait... Oh, ...!

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin

Density

58 484.090 kg/m3

Edited June 1 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

_(multipost)

Edited June 1 by kerbiloid