I recently went to see Oppenheimer. In the film they talk about neutron bombardment to split an atom.
How exactly do you “fire” neutrons? I assume its not with some sort of gun lol
Do you put some material in a confined spce and the neutrons fizz around, eventually splitting an atom?
What is done practically?
Explanations welcome, thx
In: 10
It depends on what you are trying to do with the neutrons. There are several reactions that produce neutrons. For example, if an alpha particle is absorbed by beryllium, this ejects a neutron. So you could put a strong alpha emitter (like Polonium-210) next to a bunch of beryllium and they’ll start producing neutrons. In the center of the implosion bomb in the movie they have a tiny mixture of beryllium and polonium separated by a gold foil. When the implosion crushes the capsule, the beryllium and polonium mix, creating neutrons. Something similar was used in the early experiment that discovered fission — a mixture of materials that was known to produce neutrons (the Germans used a radon–beryllium source) was put near the uranium they wanted to irradiate, basically.
You could also do a version of this with a particle accelerator, which can spin lots of charged particles up to high speeds. If you accelerate a bunch of deuterium nuclei (“deuterons”) and smash them into beryllium, they’ll also produce a bunch of neutrons.
You could also make a very tiny, not very powerful nuclear fusion source. Nuclear fusion reactions generate a lot of neutrons.
If you want the neutrons you make to be mostly going in one direction, you put the neutron source in a box made of something that can absorb neutrons and then put a little hole in it, so that only neutrons going in one direction can go out of the hole.
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