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
We originally thought you couldn’t. Our first attempt to split uranium involved launching alpha particles at it (alpha particles have a positive charge, so we could repel them with another positive charge, this is how a normal particle accelerator works) but this just made plutonium.
What we do for neutrons is make a different nuclear reaction that fires neutrons, and we use that reaction’s energy to send the neutron at high speeds. We generally use a light element like lithium or beryllium, shoot alpha particles at it, and this causes it to eject a neutron. You would need to tweak the elements and alpha particle speed to get the resulting neutron energy you need. This setup is called a neutron source.
This is exactly how we start nuclear reactors. The uranium-235 fission releases 2 or 3 neutrons of its own when it splits, so the reaction is self-sustaining. We actually need to absorb some extra neutrons to avoid the reaction happening too fast. This is what the control rods are for. If left uncontrolled, you would have a meltdown in reactor grade uranium, in weapons grade uranium, this uncontrolled reaction is what makes it explode.
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