Why do we use Uranium and Plutonium for nukes? Is it possible to use other elements?
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There’s also a concept know as “salted bombs” I think the most popular material for this theoretical bomb is cobalt 60. It’s a nuclear bomb that “salts” the earth with radioactive fallout that has a high half life regards to more traditional nuclear fallout from like atom bombs or hydrogen bombs.
Normal nuclear fallout makes an area effected by its fallout uninhabitable for 6 months to a couple years based on what bomb, and the conditions in the area. “Salted bombs” like a cobalt 60 bomb make the area uninhabitable for decades to centuries.
We do, it’s Lithium Deuteride, which is Lithium Hydride, where a high percentage of the hydrogen atoms are actually deuterium, that is, a hydrogen atom which a neutron, and an atomic weight of 2 (1 for the proton, 1 for the neutron). The natural abundance (on Earth) of deuterium is one atom for about every 6,420 regular hydrogen atoms.
This substance is the active ingredient in the [Teller-Ulam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Teller%E2%80%93Ulam_design) design of thermonuclear bomb, and is *likely* the basis for all modern nuclear weapons in the arsenals the major nuclear powers. I say ‘likely’ because these designs are, of course, top-secret.
The first occasion of the testing of Lithium Deuteride led to one of the biggest nuclear accidents in American history, [Castle Bravo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo). Operation Castle was a testing mission on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, and shot Bravo was the new experimental bomb design. The planned yield of the bomb was 6 megatons, but it turned out that the bomb exploded at approximately 15 megatons, destroying the testing facility and pulverizing a large portion of the coral atoll into radioactive fallout, which, among other victims, severely burned the crew of the Japanese fishing vessel, 第五福龍丸 (Daigo Fukuryū Maru). All of the crew were afflicted with acute radiation sickness, and one of them, Kuboyama Aikichi (sorry, I don’t know the hiragana/kanji for his name) died less than seven months later.
If you’re interested in the surreal and honestly pants-shittingly insane history of nuclear weapons development and testing, I heartily recommend watching [Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114728/), narrated by none other than William Shatner. It is the most fascinating and terrifying documentaries I’ve ever seen, and would not hestiate to recommend it to anyone.
It is possible to use certain higher actinide isotopes, but they are not found in nature and are expensive as hell to synthesize, so no one bothers with them.
For a real explainer for kids on fission look up “Our Friend the Atom”, a Disney film from the 50s. A real time-capsule. Worth watching for the mousetraps ping-pong balls scene alone.
how is this question allowed? surely it breaks Rule 2?
Simply put, they’re the elements that are best for the job. They are stable enough to store for long periods, and it’s fairly easy to make them explode. There are probably some other elements that would work, but they all have issues like short half-life and very high expense.
It would be like trying to make a car that runs on something other than gasoline. You could make a car that runs on gunpowder (and some people actually tried that), but it’s really hard to make that work. You might use hydrogen, but that’s expensive and dangerous to store. You could try using something like water, but that’s just not going to work at all.
Uranium is found in mines, but it’s really hard to separate out the “good” parts that can be used in a bomb. You can use it in a reactor, though, and if you set it up right, the reactor will make Plutonium. It’s harder to make Plutonium work in a bomb, but it’s not too hard, so that’s what we mostly use. It’s possible that certain isotopes of Neptunium, Americium, and Curium could be used, but those are extremely rare and expensive, and it would be really hard to get enough to make a bomb. Most of them are only found in nuclear waste, and if you’re producing that, you might as well just make Plutonium.
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