On August 25th, 212, about 18 billion kilometers away from the sun, NASA's Voyager-1 probe officially left the heliosphere and boldly went to a place where nothing had been before. Crossing this boundary, Voyager 1 left the solar system and entered interstellar space, which is the first time in human history. What supports this move is plutonium, which makes human space travel possible.
What is plutonium
Plutonium was first discovered in the 194s. In 1941, Glenn, his colleagues Arthur Waal and Yue Se Kennedy discovered a small amount of plutonium in the physics laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. Each plutonium atom contains 94 protons, uranium atom has 92 protons, and neptunium has 93 protons in between. Plutonium has 24 isotopes, most of which are unstable and radioactive, and their half-lives range from 28 nanoseconds to more than 8 million years. Among these isotopes, plutonium 238 and plutonium 239 are the most commonly used by humans.
plutonium was first discovered by bombarding uranium 238 with deuteron, that is, heavy hydrogen nucleus, through cyclotron to produce neptunium 238. The half-life of neptunium 238 is about two days, after which it will decay into plutonium 238. Plutonium has six crystal forms, all of which have different chemical and physical properties, but only α heterotopic can exist at normal room temperature and pressure. Metal plutonium is silver and turns yellow after oxidation in air. The most stable isotope of plutonium is plutonium 244, with a half-life of about 82 million years. The discovery of plutonium was not published until 1946, but it was already famous before that because of its amazing energy and destruction.
The left hand creates the destruction of the right hand, and the element known as the king of hell
Astronomers have observed a new dwarf planet near Neptune, which is called Pluto to commemorate the Roman god of the underworld. What many people don't know is that the name of plutonium also comes from this celestial body because of its amazing destructiveness and incredible creativity. For practical purposes, plutonium has two uses in human society: one is used as reactor fuel and the other is used in weapons. The difference between plutonium 238 and plutonium 239 is that plutonium 238 is not fissionable and cannot maintain a chain reaction, while plutonium 239 is fissionable.
a plutonium-239 with less than five kilograms can reach the critical mass for maintaining fission reaction, and the equivalent released by its explosion is equivalent to 2, tons of TNT. Enriched uranium 235 needs at least three times more raw materials than plutonium to reach this explosive level. This makes plutonium-239 the first choice for nuclear weapons. During World War II, before bombing Japan, the United States tested and exploded the first atomic bomb on earth. The explosion took place on July 16th, 1945 at Alamodo shooting range in Mexico, USA. This experiment was part of the Manhattan Project. Although it was top secret, the explosion intensity at that time could be clearly felt 16 kilometers away, and the key material for the explosion was plutonium rather than enriched uranium.
less than a month later, the United States dropped a uranium-235(U-235) nuclear bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, and three days later dropped a second atomic bomb nicknamed Fat Man in Nagasaki. The main raw materials of this atomic bomb are the same as those of the first nuclear test in the United States, all of which are plutonium. The bombing cost Japan more than 14, lives.
What is the principle of plutonium bomb explosion
Modern atomic bombs consist of three main parts: primary stage, secondary stage and radiation container. The main stage is a small ball made of plutonium, which is the core part of the bomb. Then the core is wrapped by secondary components, which are usually some chemical explosive substances, and finally the outer layer of this explosive substance is surrounded by a uranium shell.
The chemical explosive in the middle part is triggered first when initiating, which will cause implosion. The generated explosive energy can instantly squeeze the plutonium core in the middle, thus causing the density of the plutonium core to increase instantly. This artificially forces the atoms to stack together to generate free neutrons, which will lead to the fission of plutonium nuclei in a chain reaction, thus releasing huge energy. At the same time, this reaction will also lead to the fission of the outermost uranium shell, thus releasing more nuclear energy. This kind of nuclear bomb is vividly called Trinity. The earliest Trinity nuclear bomb weighed about 1, pounds. Now the development of science and technology has reduced the nuclear bomb to 25 pounds, and the volume is only the size of a suitcase.
Plutonium and electricity
Today, more than one third of the electric energy output by nuclear power plants comes from plutonium, and one kilogram of Pu-238 can generate up to 22 million kWh of energy, which is equivalent to all the electric energy needed by an ordinary medium-sized city in China.
Plutonium and space
The most important and little-known use of plutonium is to provide electricity for human beings in space exploration. Plutonium 238 will release a lot of heat when it undergoes radioactive decay, and this heat can be used in thermoelectric generators to generate electricity. Plutonium 238 has many characteristics, which makes it very important for aerospace engineers. Half-life is an index, which is used to explain the time required for atoms in a given radioisotope to decay and transform into other substances. The half-life of plutonium-238 is 88 years, when these detectors are far away from the sun and in dim places where the stars have weak light; When these probes have to fight the dust generated by past storms on the planet, they can be rovers and space probes and run continuously for decades. Therefore, plutonium-238 is very suitable for Mars and deep space exploration. So far, it has powered at least 3 American spacecraft.
Plutonium and toxic plutonium are radioactive, but you may never come into contact with them. Although plutonium exists in nature, there is no natural source of extremely small amount of plutonium with large reserves and high purity. It must be produced artificially. However, if people touch or inhale it, these plutonium will be trapped in people's lungs, and will quickly transfer to the bones and organs of the body, and eventually lead to poisoning and death. Plutonium is one of the most toxic radioactive poisons known to mankind so far. People must handle plutonium and its compounds in a closed glove box containing inert argon.
Plutonium 239, which can ask God but can't soothe the nerves, has nowhere to put it.
There is enough plutonium 239 in the world, because it is a waste product generated by nuclear power plants. Plutonium has a characteristic that it provides people with a steady stream of electric energy, but it also makes people worry that plutonium will corrode any container that stores it in molten state. It has an extraordinary ability to combine with almost all other elements in the periodic table, so the biggest problem facing weapons-grade plutonium nowadays is how to store and dispose of it. In the United States, most of it is stored in a building site in savannah river, South Carolina. This storage space is like a Pandora's Box. Once it is broken, the consequences will be unpredictable, and it can be used to make nuclear weapons.