Eli5: What causes a nuclear core to go super critical?
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The demon core is slightly different than the reactor failures.
The Demon Core was just a chunk of metal. Very refined metal though.
There is a critical mass of nuclear material, an amount where if enough of it is together, it will react with itself and give off energy in the form of radiation.
Kind of like how if you cram enough people moving around together in a crowd, eventually someone will get hurt, which may lead to more people getting hurt. Spread them out and it’s not a problem.
Radioactive material gives off energy, when a particle hits another radioactive particle it can cause that one to decay as well.
Nuclear bombs and reactors work on this principle to either control the release slowly like in a reactor, or to make it release a crap ton of energy all at once, like in a bomb. Both take radioactive material and place it close together in certain conditions, the material gives off high energy particles which then collide with other radioactive material that splits off and gives off more particles, which collide with other radioactive material.. this just repeats until either it is out of energy, or physically is too far away/the conditions are no longer right for this to happen.
This is because radioactive materials are unstable. They have extra particles and energy.
Think of them at the top of a staircase. Highly radioactive things are at the top, and stable things like lead are at the bottom.
[Each time it goes from step to step, it gives off energy, and converts to a different elemen](https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/resources/uranium/images/decaychain.jpg)t. This is for uranium instead of plutonium like the demon core but the idea is still the same.
Reactor failures can be from the same principle, but also can be more complex with mechanical failures, safety feature failures, design issues, operator error, cooling system failures, steam and hydrogen explosions etc. These all stem though from the energy from the radioactive materials.
Side note, channel I’d recommend if you’re looking at nuclear accidents, both criticality and releases of radioactive material, would be [Plainly Difficult.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5wZoswSNwc&list=PLeJkgZkJSc0T0PbDphJi5KIMCL-6uPHsd) They have some on the Demon Core, but also other criticality incidents like when it happens when mixing the products that make the core.
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