I would think that neutrons can break up any nucleus apart. Why not just use aluminium or iron. Is it because of E=mc^2 ? Greater mass equals greater energy? Would a bomb made of another material be less radioactive?
TIA
In: 30
You need an element that has a lot of neutrons that will be released at high energies in a chain reaction, you want to maximize yield per kg, and you also need it to not… you know… kill you or blow up in the meantime.
Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 are the elements which fit that bill, they’re stable until you put a supercritical mass together (usually explosively), but they’re also unstable enough to undergo a chain reaction under the right circumstances. Aluminum or Iron is so stable that breaking it apart would consume more energy than it releases, you couldn’t have a self-sustaining reaction.
Edit: Oh the opposite is true for fusion by the way, it’s MUCH easier to fuse lighter elements than heavier ones. You also can only get a net gain of energy through fusing elements up to Iron, after that it’s all downhill. In a “Hydrogen bomb” or boosted fission bomb, isotopes of Hydrogen are fused using the energy of the primary, aka the fission bomb.
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