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The Lone Badger posted:The main cause of deaths from a jury-rigged radiological weapon wouldn't be cancer, it'd be the panic.
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Aug 11, 2017 00:48
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GWBBQ posted:Yup. Dirty bombs would make for great terror weapons because radiation is invisible and the amount involved doesn't hurt you immediately. And it can hang around... And around... And around... And around...
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Aug 11, 2017 05:11
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Looking at it, it seems like Ukraine inherited a large number of nukes, but not the launch codes; those were held in Russia. They decided to destroy them instead of making themselves unpopular by taking control of them. As for the RTGs, yeah - I've read the IAEA report on the one in Georgia. Those reports are interesting if gruesome reading in general: here. They're very detailed, from the historical background through the incident and cleanup through to a detailed medical followup on the worst affected survivors. Expect diagrams of handmade RTG-moving tools, complaints about road quality in Caucasus in February, and nasty open wounds.
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Aug 11, 2017 09:54
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Thousands of nuclear weapons were sent to Russia after they signed an agreement to respect the independence and borders of Ukraine.
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Aug 11, 2017 12:01
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glynnenstein posted:Thousands of nuclear weapons were sent to Russia after they signed an agreement to respect the independence and borders of Ukraine.
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Aug 11, 2017 13:03
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDwsY1yx8XI
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Aug 12, 2017 11:51
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glynnenstein posted:Thousands of nuclear weapons were sent to Russia after they signed an agreement to respect the independence and borders of Ukraine. Yeah look at how that played out...
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Aug 12, 2017 16:57
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I just watched one of Cody's videos where he casually reveals that he's got loving NaK laying around. I imagine most folks in this thread know what that is, but for those that don't, it's all the absurd reactivity of sodium and potassium, but in liquid form, giving it a vastly increased surface area.
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Aug 12, 2017 20:39
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Hey, that's his still from his first attempt at purifying Cesium!
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Aug 12, 2017 21:28
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Hey, that's his still from his first attempt at purifying Cesium! Why would you purify Cesium 
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Aug 12, 2017 22:34
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSJGwnERIVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuEj5EhqcsQ
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Aug 12, 2017 22:36
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Mustached Demon posted:She did undergo chelation therapy but that much mercury was too much. Suppose a lower dose could be treatable. Through gloves that were thought to be protective at the time, it must be added. It was only after she died that people realized how fast the dimethylmercury went through the kind of gloves she was wearing. She wasn't careless, she was following procedures.
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Aug 12, 2017 22:56
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Tumble posted:She wasn't careless, she was following procedures. That's what makes it so extra tragic  You do everything right, and then you slowly decline in front of your family's eyes until you're insensate but still potentially in pain and slowly waste away without the faculties to even fathom what's going on.Brutal.
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Aug 13, 2017 00:23
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LogicalFallacy posted:I just watched one of Cody's videos where he casually reveals that he's got loving NaK laying around. I imagine most folks in this thread know what that is, but for those that don't, it's all the absurd reactivity of sodium and potassium, but in liquid form, giving it a vastly increased surface area. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T85d7ST2yxU&t=84s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhbWfhBDNzk&t=246s
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Aug 13, 2017 00:24
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LogicalFallacy posted:I just watched one of Cody's videos where he casually reveals that he's got loving NaK laying around. I imagine most folks in this thread know what that is, but for those that don't, it's all the absurd reactivity of sodium and potassium, but in liquid form, giving it a vastly increased surface area. Well, at least he seems to have a real NaK for handling it.
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Aug 13, 2017 10:03
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Dirt Road Junglist posted:That's what makes it so extra tragic Not just insensate and vegetative either, there were frequent random bouts of screaming and violence as well, what an awful way to go.
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Aug 13, 2017 10:10
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LogicalFallacy posted:I just watched one of Cody's videos where he casually reveals that he's got loving NaK laying around. I imagine most folks in this thread know what that is, but for those that don't, it's all the absurd reactivity of sodium and potassium, but in liquid form, giving it a vastly increased surface area. The Wikipedia article starts reasonably enough, but gets progressively more as you read.Wikipedia posted:When stored in air, it forms a yellow potassium superoxide coating and may ignite. This superoxide reacts explosively with organics. Wikipedia posted:The liquid alloy also attacks PTFE ("Teflon"). Wikipedia posted:NaK has been used as the coolant in experimental fast neutron nuclear reactors. Wikipedia posted:An apparently unintended consequence of this usage as a coolant on orbiting satellites has been the creation of additional space debris. A number of these old satellites are punctured by orbiting space debris—calculated to be 8 percent over any 50-year period—and release their NaK coolant into space. The coolant self-forms into frozen droplets of solid sodium-potassium of up to around several centimeters in size and these solid objects then become a significant source of space debris themselves. Wikipedia posted:The Danamics LMX Superleggera CPU cooler uses NaK to transport heat from the CPU to its cooling fins. Wikipedia posted:NaK-77, an eutectic alloy of sodium-potassium, can be used as a hydraulic fluid in high-temperature and high-radiation environments, for temperature ranges of 10 to 1,400 °F (−12 to 760 °C). [...] Addition of caesium shifts the useful temperature range to −95 to 1,300 °F (−71 to 704 °C).
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Aug 13, 2017 11:00
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My favorite bit about NaK is the pump developed at (I think) University of Nottingham. NaK is a metal, so they just put a pair of magnets around the tube carrying it, then passed a current at right angles, and it's a pump! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EGAXOWpGy8
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Aug 13, 2017 15:07
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LogicalFallacy posted:I just watched one of Cody's videos where he casually reveals that he's got loving NaK laying around. I imagine most folks in this thread know what that is, but for those that don't, it's all the absurd reactivity of sodium and potassium, but in liquid form, giving it a vastly increased surface area. It occurs to me that if you swapped out the molten lithium in the LiFH tripropellant motor for NaK, you might have something easier to handle (because you now have two cryogenic propellants and one room-temperature one, rather than two cryos and one that needs to be kept at 200°C) without sacrificing too much Isp. Well. "Easier".
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Aug 13, 2017 17:15
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That depends... is liquid lithium hypergolic with itself? E. Sorry misunderstood. Just have an aversion of mixing potassium into anything, you know? ThisIsJohnWayne has a new favorite as of 17:46 on Aug 13, 2017 |
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Aug 13, 2017 17:43
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ToxicFrog posted:
I think you lose an awful lot of Isp, since your two thrust species (Li and H) with an effective weight of about 3.3 have been replaced with NaK+H with an effective weight of about 15. I'd expect to see exhaust velocity drop by about 80% or so, with the Isp loss that incurs.
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Aug 13, 2017 17:45
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:My favorite bit about NaK is the pump developed at (I think) University of Nottingham. NaK is a metal, so they just put a pair of magnets around the tube carrying it, then passed a current at right angles, and it's a pump! One very Non-contact coolant circulation is almost maybe possibly nice enough to briefly consider a NaK-cooled core again. If only it worked for molten salt formulations...
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Aug 14, 2017 05:42
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Did that video ever answer whether they found a material that didn’t corrode with NaK throughput? Glass makes sense but is a terrible choice for a coolant loop, so I’m guessing something basic is in use in breeder reactors? Copper maybe? Edit: probably not copper just tell me SLOSifl has a new favorite as of 08:56 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 08:53
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NaK is highly corrosive... and we were talking about rocket fuels, as we do... hmmm. Nitric Acid in configurations as rocket fuel for Soviet/Russian ICBM systems are made significantly less corrosive by addition of small (6‰) amounts of Flourine (or other, still classified, materials). Wonder if it's possible to do the same for NaK? A less maintenance intensive/hotter running breader reactor would be a hell of a machine. ThisIsJohnWayne has a new favorite as of 10:30 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 10:20
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Ah yes, the old "add fluorine to make it less corrosive trick". Now tell me about adding tnt to hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane to make it more stable 
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Aug 14, 2017 12:16
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Moist von Lipwig posted:Ah yes, the old "add fluorine to make it less corrosive trick". Now tell me about adding tnt to hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane to make it more stable Not until you agree CL-20 is easier to say than hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane  HNIW/CL-20 is incidentally also used in solid rocket fuel as an (expensive) energetic booster. The line between cold war rocket science and cold war explosive science doesn't really exist. ThisIsJohnWayne has a new favorite as of 13:00 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 12:51
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:The line between cold war rocket science and cold war explosive science doesn't really exist. As demonstrated when someone proposed building a rocket out of nukes.
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Aug 14, 2017 13:13
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ThisIsJohnWayne posted:The line between cold war rocket science and cold war explosive science doesn't really exist.
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Aug 14, 2017 13:24
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Collateral Damage posted:Because the line blew away? Because the line blew away. The people who survived ww2 correctly understood that explosions were the quickest way to move anything, be they people, science, nazis, or societies. War! what is it good for? Making people not fear the bombs, apparently. "Push it to the Limit" should've been written in 1951 by Herman Kahn.
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Aug 14, 2017 13:55
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The Lone Badger posted:As demonstrated when someone proposed building a rocket out of nukes. I was taking about crazy rockets with my son and he flat out refused to believe project Orion wasn't a joke until I showed him a bunch of videos on the concept. He maintains its the stupidest amazing idea he's ever hard.
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Aug 14, 2017 13:57
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Nuclear pulse propulsion is in fact the only non‐stupid way to move a big spaceship with current or near‐future technology. And it’s been that way for sixty years. Casaba howitze, thoughr: that was actual insanity. 
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Aug 14, 2017 14:06
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Platystemon posted:Nuclear pulse propulsion is in fact the only non‐stupid way to move a big spaceship with current or near‐future technology. And it’s been that way for sixty years. I'd like to stress that a Casaba howitzer isn't an insane idea because it wouldn't work, but because it's such a badass weapon that there's currently no extraterrestrial targets important enough to use one on, and here on Earth it wouldn't be a great deal more useful than regular nukes because when a weapon can annihilate anything, the atmosphere itself becomes useful cover. Though I suppose most destructive devices can be countered by putting several hundred km of air between them and their target. Yeah, that is a pretty basic strategy.
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Aug 14, 2017 15:39
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Moist von Lipwig posted:Ah yes, the old "add fluorine to make it less corrosive trick". Now tell me about adding tnt to hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane to make it more stable
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Aug 14, 2017 16:12
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Syd Midnight posted:I'd like to stress that a Casaba howitzer isn't an insane idea because it wouldn't work, but because it's such a badass weapon that there's currently no extraterrestrial targets important enough to use one on, Ted Taylor had an idea for using it for civil engineering purposes. He calculated that even a one-kiloton unit could displace some absurd amount of rock, and suggested using them to dig a tunnel coast-to-coast, pump it down to vacuum, and then run high-speed trains through it. Ted Taylor also designed the largest pure-fission bomb ever, which yielded 500 kilotons. It used so much HEU that for safety the design called for a boron chain to be kept inside the pit, which was pulled out by the flight crew immediately before the bomb was dropped. Man was crazy-smart, is what I'm saying. Phanatic has a new favorite as of 16:29 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 16:26
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Phanatic posted:Man was crazy Don't tell Elon Musk about nuclear tunneling 
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Aug 14, 2017 16:44
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Phanatic posted:Ted Taylor had an idea for using it for civil engineering purposes. He calculated that even a one-kiloton unit could displace some absurd amount of rock, and suggested using them to dig a tunnel coast-to-coast, pump it down to vacuum, and then run high-speed trains through it. Sounds more like Tim Taylor, to be honest. "More nuclear power! *grunts*"
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Aug 14, 2017 17:14
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Every time I think of project Orion, I see this in my mind:
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Aug 14, 2017 17:32
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darthbob88 posted:To be fair, apparently the HF doesn't make nitric acid itself less corrosive, it just creates a protective fluoride layer on the storage tanks to prevent them from being further corroded. Yup, once fluorine has formed a bond it doesn't really want to let go. Problems arise when the things it bonds to are things you wanted to remain unbonded. Fluoride layers also don't flake and aren't porous, so once they're formed you're golden.
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Aug 14, 2017 17:45
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Wasabi the J posted:Every time I think of project Orion, I see this in my mind: what? It's the same principle as a gun. We'd be way farther along in space travel if we didn't depend on lovely chemical rockets to take tons of parts and goods into orbit.
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Aug 14, 2017 17:54
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Johnny Aztec posted:what? It's the same principle as a gun. People would throw a shitfit about the fallout. Although I read about one plan to mitigate that by using a huge pile of conventional explosives to get the thing away from the ground.
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Aug 14, 2017 18:37
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