I’ve been binge watching YouTube about nuclear criticality events, and I get the basic principle that you have two radioactive items and they come in contact long enough to create an event.
But I am not quite getting it. So for example, I watched a video about the demon core, but I am not sure how the shims were preventing criticality.
Thank you.
In: Physics
Radio active materials naturally emit alpha particles. Alpha particles hitting radio active materials causes it to release more alpha particles. In small enough quantities most particles go harmless into the surrounding environment.
If you put enough radio active material together so that most particles are hitting other material, the rate of release will go exponential, and now you have lethal amount going into the surrounding environment.
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