Super Uranium... Would Physics Allow For It?

[lajoswinkler]

more radioactivity = less time being radioactive

There is a good reason why uranium is the last stable element found in nature in bulk amounts allowing for geochemistry to do its thing.

[Nuke]

8 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

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.

i was just trying to come up with an application for the stuff. really it doesn't do anything conventional nuclear fuels cant do with less fuss. hard to find applications outside of blow stuff up or irradiate things. its not even suitable for interstellar transfers (pulse units or reactor fuel) because of shorter half lives (also kind of makes it useless for a nuclear deterrent).

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

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.

  

Wait... Oh, ...!

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

Density

58 484.090 kg/m3

well that explains why they are so green.

i know cherenkov radiation is blue, so there is probably also some biophosphorescence going on.

Edited June 1 by Nuke