Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseWhat would you need to build your own nuke?
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Hey, Daniel, do you ever wish he had a superpower.
All the time? I wish I had lots of superpowers. Yeah, but you know, science has actually provided us with some real, honest to God powers that our ancestors might have thought were superpowers. Jetpacks not quite yet, but you know, we can do some pretty amazing stuff teleportation. Well, listen to the podcast episode about teleportation before you decide, Well, we can do some pretty amazing stuff, stuff that would have limited to deities a thousand years ago. You know, things like harnessing the power of the sun.
What do you mean, like we can create the sun here on Earth.
Yeah. Absolutely, we can create miniature suns here on Earth. Not recommended to do and you're at home, kitchen, but it's something science is capable of. Hi. I'm Jorge and I'm Daniel.
Welcome to Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe our podcast about the universe.
And everything in it and everyone in it, and even about aliens if they are in it. Yeah, even about sons sons Sun and sons s n We explain it all today in the program. We are actually talking about harnessing the power of the sun. Science has distilled the thing that happens inside the sun, the energy release, and made it available for us.
Here on earth with explosive results.
That's right. So if you are a dictator of your own little country looking to become a nuclear superpower, this is the podcast for you.
Do they ever going to talk about nuclear weapons and specifically the nuclear bomb? How does it work?
How do you build one in your garage? Should you build one in your garage? The answer is no, The answer is definitely no, one should you? But could you?
Maybe this podcast is about the science not the ethics.
I think we'll touch on both actually, because science is never free of ethics. It's always a complex mixtuer.
So nuclear bombs is something that people obviously were very surprised to learn about in the mid forties, and then there was a huge concern with the Cold War up until the eighties and nineties, but then it sort of quite it down until a little bit recently. Right, there's been a lot of talk about rogue nations and the threat of nuclear bombs and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Well, if you ask the Union of Concerned Scientists, I don't think they've quiet it down at all. There's been a pretty consistent fear that we would destroy ourselves and kill everybody on it basically since we've got the power to do so. Yeah, I mean we had in the eighties, the USSR and the USA had enormous nuclear stockpile, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other with hair triggers. And these days we have fewer, you know, in the number of thousands instead of tens of thousands, But still there's plenty of power there to destroy each other very easily, are you sing?
Scientists have a hard time relaxing in general.
If you know, the more you know about the state of nuclear weapons, the harder it is to really relax. Yes, but you know, your point is taken. The big powers have not yet blown each other up, and we are worried these days about smaller powers, nuclear powers and terrorists at North Korea and all these folks who were developing these capabilities.
So it kind of made us wonder, like, how many people out there actually know how a nuclear bomb works, and how do you make one?
And would it be a bad idea to explain to everybody exactly how to build a nuclear bomb?
Yeah? Are we going to get arrested for this podcast or put on some kind of watch list surveillance?
That's right? And they say, we are not telling that everybody anything they wouldn't know in a physics class anyway. Yes, yes, if we are going to get arrested for treason, you got to lock up every professor out.
There, yes, which I bet some people would.
Like to do. That's right. That was not a suggestion.
So we went out there and asked people, do you know how a nuclear bomb works?
Yeah? So think for a moment, how much do you know about a nuclear weapon? How does it actually work? If you had to? Could you build one in your garage?
Here's what people had to say, Not.
Sure, Honestly, I do not have no idea at all.
Guess by smashing together particles cool? I'd only say China's but I don't know how to say it in the Engish, right Chinese?
Uh?
Olivia? So there is a two kinds of nuclear bone ride?
Yeah?
Item bind? What was that called hydrateable? Yeah? So it's why is vision, Yeah, why is yeah? Yeah, Yeah, so that's interesting. I feel like not a lot of people know how nuclear bomb works.
Yeah. Half the people had no idea, and the other half had some idea that it was something about the power of the atom. I like the guy who only knew the words in Chinese, he was so excited to tell me what he knew that. I was like, yeah, tell me in Chinese, that's fine. He definitely knew something about the topic. Yeah, but yeah, people generally either didn't know anything or they knew that had something to do with the atom, and they're right. Essentially, the way a nuclear bomb works is that it releases energy stored inside the atom or lots of atoms really really rapidly.
M That's what it's called the atomic bomb.
Yeah. The early versions are called atomic bombs. So there's sort of two categories of nuclear weapons. There's the early ones that use fission where you split an atom apart. Those are called atomic bombs, and the later ones, that are called hydrogen bombs or h bombs, Those use fusion where you squeeze nuclei together. And we'll get into the nitty gritty of exactly all how that works and why it's interesting. So there are atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs, both nuclear weapons.
Oh, I see, and they weren't using different methods. One of them is fizzy, the other one is fuzzy.
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. One of them split the atom opened, and the other one squeezes atoms together. Okay, and it's sort of surprising, you might be thinking. Hold on, if splitting the atoms open releases energy, how come the opposite thing of fusing them together also releases energy.
Yeah. Well, before we get into the technical details, you mentioned you had some personal connection to the Manhattan Project and the nuclear industry here in the United States.
Can you tell us about that. Yeah, it's not that I've ever built a nuclear bomb myself. No, certainly not you.
It's not doctor Manhattan.
I'm not Doctor Manhattan. But I did grow up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the home of the Manhattan Project, where in the forties all these scientists got together to crack this mystery. And you know, the history of this is fascinating. It was in the late thirties that people figured out, oh, you can split the atom and release some huge amounts of energy, much more energy than is released when you blow up dynamite or burn coal or anything like that. And so immediately, even before the world was at war, people realized this is the technology for a new weapon. This could be a devastating new superweapon. And so, of course most people know the story. The US government gathered people together in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. They chose Los Almos because it's a place basically no one would go on purpose, and so no one would run into it.
It wasn't because if they made a mistake, not that many people would would die in an accident.
Uh, you know what, that's probably an aspect to it also being remote out in the middle of the desert. But as a high schooler, you know, it wasn't much consolation to know that you were living in a place that the government thought was going to be super boring and no one would want to go to. And they were pretty much right. There's not a whole lot to do in Los Alamos.
Ben. In fact, your parents worked for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, right, They worked on nuclear engineering and physics.
That's right. Both of my parents worked for Los Alamos Labs where the bombs were developed. What they work on. I can't tell you, not because I'm being secretive about it, but because I don't know. Both of them had Q clearances.
They never told you.
No, I never visited their offices. I never talked to them in any detail about their work. I never heard about it because it was all behind the clearance fence, the security fence. It was all top secret.
Wow, they saw you as a threat even then, that's right.
They had to go through liborate procedures to make sure they were trustworthy, were not going to be spies for some enemnation or something like that or blackmailable.
So like at the dinner table, what would you guys talk about, like how is work? I can't tell you. Son't ask me.
We learned pretty quickly not to ask those questions exactly. And there was no you know, take your son to work day or this kind of stuff. And you know, it's interesting because when I was a kid, I learned about the history of Los Alamos, and in Los Amos, they teach you pride. They teach you this is the place the bomb was developed, this is the location of a great scientific discovery, and not just that, but that we should feel pride. National pride and having developed something which won the war. Right, people in this town, scientists and where your parents work, they won the war with their brains. And so this sort of like pride was really deeply woven into the curriculum and life in Los Almos.
It's almost like propaganda.
Definitely, it's exactly like propaganda, because it is propaganda. And it was only later that I heard about the controversy, like should we have dropped those bombs and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians? Wow? You know that turns out to be quite a complex moral question, you know. And if you're a scientist working on these weapons, should you be should you be developing these weapons and putting them in the hands of politicians who could use them to kill women and children?
Did you ever talk to your dad about that, like if he ever felt any feelings like that or had any thoughts about that.
You know, what's interesting is I didn't ask them about it until I was in my twenties, you know, like a decade after we lived in Los Almos, and I asked him about it, and he said, you're the first person to ask me that question. Wow, And that was sort of shocking. Also, like people almost almost don't discuss it very much. His friends didn't ask him, his family, his old family didn't ask him. I was a physics student. I knew all about this and never asked him until it finally occurred to me.
Wow.
And yeah, so I asked him, and he, you know, he's he's thought about it, he's balanced these things, and he thought that the nation needed defending, and there are other people out there developing nuclear weapons, and that we needed to have our arsenal ready and needed to be a tip top shape, and we needed to have the same guns as the enemy had. And you know, this was in the eighties and nineties, and so the Cold War was a very recent memory, and it was not ridiculous to think that that Russia could launch nuclear weapons against us. So I think he felt some sort of pride that he was helping the national cause. Wow.
So, like, what was your high school mascot in your school?
The Adamy radiation that the fallout.
Right, Robbie, the radioactive isotope.
No, No, it was nothing so exciting. We lived in the top of a hill that's almost the top of a mountain, So our high school mascot is the Hilltoppers. Yeah, not terribly exciting, But my reaction to this moral quandary was totally different. I didn't want to have anything to do with it, and so when I had to choose a field of physics to study, I chose something very far away from any practical applications, which is, you know, Higgs boson and dark matter and particle physics. And so was a selling point to me that none of my research could ever have any practical, immediate practical application and therefore probably not be used to kill any babies. And you know that helps me sleep at night, not killing babies for my work.
Just avoid all responsibility.
Yeah, you almost could say I'm a cartoonist, right, have any of your cartoons ever killed any babies?
Not that I know of.
Maybe you should look into that whoorhe jeez, and should have a more definitive answer to that question.
I feel like it's a great recruiting of audio for physicists, you know, looking to avoid responsibility, don't want any think they do with the real world, like the particle physics.
Don't like killing babies. Go into particle physics. We have killed zero babies to date.
So you're you're tied to sort of the history of nuclear energy in this country.
Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, my parents were supported by the Department of Energy, and now actually the Department of Energy supports my research. So I've basically been supported by the Department of Energy directly or indirectly since I was ten. Wow, So I'm pretty totally closely tied into what I can say. I'm completely morally insulated from it. I mean, I ate food which was paid for by the programs which funded nuclear weapons development, et cetera, et cetera. So my hands are not clean. Yeah. So I feel this personal connection and I used to feel this pride and now I feel, you know, not shame. But it's definitely more complicated, definitely not happy. When I imagine all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'm going about their day and then being suddenly destroyed by nuclear bombs.
It's definitely complicated how these bombs work. But before we get into it, let's take a quick break.
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All right, so let's talk about how exactly a nuclear bomb works. So you said there's two kinds. Actually there is fusion hmm, and there is fission bombs. So that's two different kinds of nuclear bombs. How do they work?
That's right? And so if you are the director of a rogue nation's nuclear weapons program, this is where you're gonna want to start taking notes.
Okay, so I like, how do you choose which one?
It's fascinating because a fusion bomb actually requires a fission bomb to ignite it. Yeah, but we'll talk about that in a minute. So you should start with if you're developing a new technology, you start with fission because it's easier, although fusion is much more powerful.
So fission is breaking the nucleus of an atom and fusion is putting together the nucleus of an atom. That's the difference, right, That's right. Fusion is fusing together a nucleus, and fission is breaking it.
Apart exactly, fizzing it or fissiling it or physicisting it or whatever the verb is, fizzing or fission fizzing. Okay, thank you. But a nuclear bomb works essentially the same way as another bomb, in that its goal is released a lot of energy. Right, So you have to find some stored energy and release it. And you can do that in dynamite where this stored chemical energy or something you know, oil where this stored stored energy in the gasoline or whatever. But nuclear energy is much more powerful because it has a lot more energy stored in it.
Because that's all a bomb is. It's just the release of a lot of energy at the same time in a small space.
Right. Exactly, anything you use for power you can also turn into a bomb. Just release that energy really really quickly. Right. You can slowly burn the gasoline in your car, or you can put it in a vodka bottle and set it on fire like a Molotov cocktail. It's the same process. It just happens more rapidly. And if you release all that energy really quickly, then it creates a shock wave, right, and that's what's destructive, is creating all this energy release at once creates this shockwave of heat and air, and that's what blasts things apart. I see.
So, like, the batteries in my phone have a lot of energy stored into it, but there's no reaction that will cause it to be released all quickly at the same time, exactly unless you have the galaxy node seven, which if you have it, please please take it back in.
Right, But as far as I'm aware, there's no nuclear bomb app that which will set your phone on fire or anything. So where does that energy come from? And so our interviewees were correct, and that energy comes from the atom itself. That is, if you take uranium, example, and you split it in half, energy is released. And so that's the basic idea. And you might wonder, well why is energy released? Right, Well, so uranium breaks into two other things, krypton and barium, and so those two things are released. And the reason energy is released is because there's more energy stored in uranium than in the sum of krypton and barium, and so when you break it into crypton and barium, there's extra energy left over.
But it's kind of weird to grasp because if I take a stick of wood and I split it in half, I don't get energy released.
That's right. But imagine you had a stick of wood that was in two pieces and it was held together by a spring. Oh. Ok Then there's stored energy in that configuration, and when you break it, that's released.
The spring will sprung out.
Yeah, we'll sprung out, and it'll push the two things apart. For example. So if there's stored energy in the configuration and you break it, then that energy is released. And so that's what happens when you break a uranium atom. There's energy stored in the arrangement, right, and then energy is.
Released, meaning and that's what it does. It that energy that's stored then pushes the two pieces apart really fast.
Yeah, and it actually sends out neutrons. You get two other smaller atoms and a bunch of neutrons which fly out.
Okay, And the neutrons were actually part of the original nucleus.
Yeah, exactly, part of the uranium nucleus. So you got to start with something which can break into two smaller pieces and release energy. That's the goal if you want to do fission. Okay, and uranium is great for that. There are other things that can do it also, plutonium, amerisium, other ones, but uranium is the one which works best.
Okay, why is it good for? Why is uranium good? What's special about uranium?
Well, it just so happens that there's an isotope of uranium, uranium two thirty five, which is really unstable, and so it's easier to get it too. I'm looking for that verb again, fizz fizsile vision eate split fission eight split, thank you. It's easier to get uranium two thirty five to split than uranium two thirty eight or whatever.
Each is like it different, breaking apart itself, so it's easy to make it split up.
Exactly, it's less stable exactly, right. Yeah, and so that's fission.
That's why you always hear uranium and uranium cakes and uranium enrichment.
Exactly, uranium enrichment because the kind of uranium that you normally find in the ground a uranium mine is not uranium two thirty five is not the kind we want for nuclear weapons. That kind is pretty rare. It's you know, one in a I don't know the number, but one in a zillion atoms of uranium that you find in the ground is the kind you need for nuclear weapons, which is why one of the big obstacles to making a nuclear weapon is not knowing how to do it because this physics is pretty widely known. But getting the fuel, yeah, these that's why, for example, Iran was working on centrifuges because they're trying to separate out the different isotopes of uranium to get the one that's good for the bomb.
I believe the number is zero point.
Wow, it's like your Siri or Wikipedia.
Okay, so yeah, so uranium is about to split and has a lot of energy. That's why they use it for fission bombs.
That's right. But there's another key element, which is you can't just release the energy of one atom. I mean, you can do that, but it's not very it's not going to be a very good bomb, right, And what you need is, as we said, is to release a lot of energy all at once, and for that you need not just one atom to go, but a lot of atoms to go.
Ok.
So for that to happen, you need to create a chain reaction.
So meaning you take a lot of this enriched uranium. So uranium that has a lot of this you two thirty five, and you put it onto this one spot and then you cause a chain reaction. That's the idea of a bomb.
Right, Yeah, exactly. And so the neutrons that fly out and carry some of this leftover energy then bump into other uranium two thirty five atoms, which then fizzile physic physic linked, yes, split and then it goes on and on and on, and you get more neutrons and more neutrons, and pretty soon you have a huge number of neutrons flying out, which create which causes a huge amount of atoms to split, all at the same time, and that's your explosion right there. In order for that to happen, you need to have enough fuel and it needs to be dense enough so the neutrons bump into the other atoms. So that's called the critical mass. When you have enough fuel and a dense enough location, and that's really all you need to do to start the bomb off.
Like a rumor or like a panic in a crowd, you need enough people jammed together to really cause a big panic.
Yeah exactly. For your analogy, you need something to trigger the other thing. It's like that scene in stand By Me, you know, where they're vomiting, or that vomits. The smell causes two other people to vomit, which costs four other people to vomit pretty soon.
Everybody, Oh yeah, yeah that movie.
Yeah.
But if people were not close together, then you wouldn't this reaction wouldn't catch fire, right like, it wouldn't catch on. So you need you need a lot of people together, a lot of these atoms together to cause this chain reaction exactly.
And all you need to do to create a nuclear weapon, people might be wanet. How do you start it? Do you like have a pile of uranium and you like light a match or put a lighter on it or something. All you need to do is have enough fuel all put together, and one of the atoms inside it will be unstable enough to just fall apart on its own and that will trigger the chain reaction which leads to the explosion. Wow. And so the way the nuclear botob actually works is you basically have two subcritical masses, like a chunk uranium here and a chunk uranium there. I mean, you just slam them together and then it goes off and that's it. So for those of you out there looking to build a nuclear weapon. All you need to do is get enough uranium two thirty five and arrange it in two pieces to slam.
Together in the right concentration.
In the right concentration, the right purity. Yeah, okay, And some of the original designs that were like, well, let's make one of the pieces sort of like a cup and the other piece sort of like a ball, and will just like drop the ball in the cup, and that worked.
Really, so just bringing these two things together will suddenly cause the reaction to start.
Yeah, exactly, that's all you need to do.
So separately happens. Why don't they start separately.
Well, they do start separately, they just don't take off. So you have atoms in there decaying all the time, but they don't start the chain reaction because it's not density.
It just doesn't catch fire.
Yeah, you need to essentially to have these two pieces and have them be dense enough to squeeze them a little bit. And so what they actually they don't call it a ball and a cup. They call it the gun assembly because they basically shoot one piece of uranium into another and that creates this density that you need to have the chain reaction.
So that's a fission bomb that's splitting. That's the one that splits atoms. There's also one that fuses atoms.
Yeah, and it's fascinating to me. It's a totally different process and that sticking atoms together can also release energy the same way splitting an atom can. Right, that's really counterintuitive. Yeah, but the way it works is you take two pieces of hydrogen, so the lightest element there is, and you stick them together and you get helium. And you don't just get helium, you get extra energy left over.
So where did this energy come from?
The energy comes from the configuration of the helium atom versus the configuration of the hydrogen atom. What is helium? It's basically just two hydrogen atoms stuck together, right, and so you got those protons, you got those neutrons all mixed together. It takes more energy to break helium apart than it does to break hydrogen atom apart, and so when you put the helium together, that energy has to get released somewhere. It's like you've put two hygen atoms into a hole, right, and that you would need to use energy to take them out again. So when you put them in that hole, some energy is released. It's like you drop them in the hole and the eternal lever which generates some electricity or something.
It's kind of like if you're single, you have to pay a certain amount of taxes, but if you get married, then you have to pay maybe a little bit less of taxes.
Right, yeah, exactly right, exactly right. But that kind of marital fusion doesn't usually cause weapons of mass destruction though.
Yeah, But it's kind of the same idea. It's like, separately, you make a certain amount of money put together, because you're the configuration together, you have extra money left over.
Yeah, And it all depends on the configuration of the atoms inside. And so it just so happens that helium takes more energy to break apart than hydrogen does. And so when you build helium out of hydrogen, energy is released. And then you could take that energy and put it back in to break the helium apart and get your hydrogen back. I see. So it makes more sense if you think about it the other direction. Take helium, you need to put energy in to break it into hydrogen. I see.
It's not like uranium, where if you break it it releases energy. This time, it costs you energy to break helium apart.
That's right. Imagine you know, for example, you have two magnets and they're stuck together, right, Obviously it takes energy to pull those two magnets apart, right, So that means that when the two magnets stick together, energy is released. Okay, And that's exactly what happens.
So why is it that some atoms cost energy to break apart and others give you energy when you break them apart.
It's all in the nitty gritty details of how quantum chromoine as work. This energy of the strong nuclear force. Various arrangements of protons and neutrons are a different energy. It's really technical. But the fascinating thing is that if you fuse atoms together, as long as they're light, anything lighter than iron, if you fuse them together and energy is released. Anything heavier than iron, If you split it apart, energy is released. Okay, So lighter than iron you can fuse. Heavier than iron you can split.
So iron kind of sits in the middle.
Iron iron, yeah, Iron, ironically ironic iron, And that's why, for example, iron is the heaviest thing that's made in the sun because the Sun is just a big fusion bomb and it's making heavier and heavier elements, but it stops at iron because after iron, it.
Didn't cost you energy to make anything bigger. But if you have something bigger and you break it, then that gives you the energy back, and that's that's where the bomb comes.
From, exactly exactly. So a hydrogen bomb is like, you got to stick these two things together, right, but you know hydrogen is positively charged. How do you get two hydrogenatoms to stick together. It's not easy. You gotta squeeze them really really hard.
That's why it costs energy. No, that's what dizzy.
It's complicated because when they're really close together, the strong nuclear force takes over, and the process we talked about the releases energy takes over. When they're a little further apart, it's the positive charges that take over. So it's sort of like have you ever been to putt putt golf? Right, and you have to get the ball into a hole, But the hole is at the top of a little hill. If you get it just right, boom, it'll stick in the hole and stay there. If you miss a little bit, the hill will push you away. So getting fusion to work is a little bit like that. You've got to squeeze the hydrogen outs together. If you get them close enough, they will stick and they will release energy. That's like the golf ball falling in the hole. If you don't get them close enough, they're just going to push each other apart.
So the first atomic bombs that we made were hydrogen bombs right now.
The first ones were fission bombs that were uranium.
Oh, I see, and then later we made hydrogen bombs.
Yeah. And the only way we could make hydrogen bombs was by setting off an atomic bomb. Yeah. So you need to surround a bunch of hydrogen with nuclear weapons blow those up, right, So you set off a fission bomb, which creates enough energy density to squeeze the hydrogen to cause it to fuse, which sets off the hydrogen bomb.
Wo.
So hydrogen bomb is really a two step process. It's first, let's do an old fashioned atomic bomb, and that's like the ignition switch for the hydrogen bomb, right like yesterday's super weapon is today's ignition switch. It's crazy.
And so both of these types of bombs have are more explosive than say, dynamite just because there's more energy inside of the atom than in the reaction between atoms.
That's right. All the other kinds of bombs, dynamite and you know, gas bombs, whatever, those are just releasing the energy and chemical bonds, which is not a lot compared to the energy stored inside the atom. And that's because a strong nuclear force is a super duke st and it just happens that there's a huge amount of energy stored inside the atom.
Okay, so it sounds sort of simple. So does that mean that anyone can make a nuclear bomb.
It's tricky. You need to get the materials right. Even for a hydrogen bomb, which just requires hydrogen, you need to create fusion, which means creating a fission explosion. So basically the gatekeeper for creating nuclear weapons is getting the nuclear fuel. These days, we rely on the fact that uranium is hard to find. You have to mine it and then you have to enrich it. And so basically, if you want to build a nuclear weapon, then you have to get enough uranium two thirty five. After that, it's not too complicated. Wow, well let's get into it. But first let's take a quick break. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt. You're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite, but the people in the dairy industry are. US Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustain ability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneuver into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit us dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
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What prevents just anyone from building a bomb in their backyard.
Not a whole lot. If you can get your hands on the fuel, you know, if you have enough uranium time thirty five or plutonium or some other material which is good at splitting, then you can build a nuclear bomb. It's not too complicated. There's schematics out there if you're really into engineering, really, but if you want to Yeah, that part is not secret. It used to be. I mean in the fifties, this level of information would get you thrown in jail or executed for treason. Yeah.
Probably broadcasting a podcast about how to make one would probably get you arrested too.
Let's check with legal before we strett this podcast anyway, because I'm not so into spending the rest of my life in jail. But it's really just the limitation is the fuel, which is why countries like Iran and North Korea and those folks are building centrifuges, and the way to stop them is to try to stop them from getting the material. You know. One of my favorite stories about geopolitics is the way the Israeli sabotaged the Iranian centrifuges.
How did they do it?
They wrote a computer virus which specifically targeted the people working at that facility to get them like download it and click it and get it to control the century. It's pretty slick and it got the centrifuges to spin wrong. WHOA.
So the difficulty in building a bomb isn't getting the nuclear materials, because I mean it's kind of a big effort not just to mine it, find out where it is, mine it, and then you have to process it right. And so to do that you need a lot of infrastructure and a lot of factory and money. And so at some point people are going to notice that what you're doing, right.
Yeah, it's hard to keep that kind of stuff secret. There's not that many people in the world who are good at it, at filtering nuclear materials.
And that technology, I read is actually what is kept secret a lot, right, Like the technology actually enrich uranium and want to do it and how to handle it. That one is not like you can't just find that on the internet.
That's right, And if somebody developed a new, cheap, fast, easy way to enrich uranium, we would all be in trouble because that's really the gatekeeper to lots of people get nuclear weapons, because you don't need that much. I mean, you can get a suitcase size bomb that could blow up a major city if you had the nuclear materials.
If you had to terrifying it's hard to find it and process it. That's the hopefully the only thing that's keeping us from going up in a big ball of fire.
That's right exactly. And so you know, you think about the scientists who are working on this kind of stuff, and you know, how do they feel about having developed this technology? You know, Jay Robert Oppenheimer, the guy who led the Manhattan Project, he's famous for having felt both ways about this. When he saw the first nuclear bomb go off in New Mexico, you know, he said, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. That's pretty serious stuff, right. I've never created something so dangerous, but I would wonder about how I would sleep at night if I created a super weapon.
I had to write an article once about nuclear proliferation and what keeps countries from making these bombs and what's the world order that kind of prevents all this from happening. And what's kind of interesting is that you can take uranium and you start to enrich it, and if you reach a certain point then that you can use that uranium for good, Like if it reaches about I think it's something like I'm when I say five to seven percent of the uranium two thirty five in it, then that's the stuff you can use for actually good purposes.
You mean nuclear power, like generating.
Electricity, generating electricity, or medical equipment. But if you leave the machine on longer, if you keep enriching it, then you get to like ninety percent, and that's the stuff you can use for weapons. So it's a really tricky balance of like letting people use and make uranium for good stuff, but then you have to watch out to see if they keep going and make it into the bomb type.
So it's like that knob on your dryer where you're like, how dry do you want your cake? Good for society dry or evil? Destructive? Dry?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I always choose maximum dry.
You always you go for destructive.
Yeah. But I like your anecdote because it tells the story. You know that not only is nuclear power potentially the source of super weapons that will eradicate all life on Earth, but also it's a possible source of energy that we need, you know, and everybody's familiar with fission as a source of nuclear power. And you know, a bomb is releasing energy rapidly, but a battery is, you say, is releasing energy slowly. So you can also create a chain reaction that and control it in a way that doesn't run It's not a runaway reaction. Very gradually releases energy. Yeah, and so that's what they do in power plants. And you know when you hear they have a meltdown, that's because the uranium has gotten too hot and its chain reaction is started. And that's not what you want. You don't want to be blowing up nuclear bombs inside your facility. Yeah, and fusion also has tremendous possibilities for the future because fusion is much more powerful, huge amount of energy potentially released, the source of fuels and all this like weird metal you have to dig up in the ground. Uranium, it's just hydrogen, which is everywhere. And the best thing is that there's no radioactive waste fission as a nuclear power source. You get uranium, it turns into this other radioactive crap which lasts for ten thousand years, et cetera. What you can do with it?
Yeah, well, I think that the cool thing is that the same reaction that makes this bomb, right, Like, that's happening in the sun.
Right now, zillions of times.
Yeah, it's just like this continual, simmering giant nuclear bomb.
It's going off constantly.
Yeah, that's the whole reason we hear. Like, so this same idea, like this chain reaction, it doesn't have to be this kind of always explosive, you know, destructive thing. I mean, the Sun is just like it's just there burning, continually exploding, and so we could have that on Earth too, right, Like, that's the idea behind fusion energy, is that if we could create a mini sun basically like a continual mini nuclear explosion, then think about all the energy we could get from that.
That's right, And that was actually my first science job, my first science work ever was in college. I went and did an internship at Los Almos and worked on their fusion energy program because I thought this would be a good application of this kind of research, This would be a way to help humanity. And it's true, and it's very promising. And as I was saying before, there's no radioac to fallout or waste. It just produces helium. The problem is that it's hard to do. You know there were on it. We could do a whole other podcast about how to build a little sun on Earth and keep it from turning into a bomb and burning everybody.
Well, that'd be cool. So if they make it work, it will not just give energy for everybody, but everybody will get a helium balloon.
That's right. We'll all talk kind of like this, Yeah, exactly, it'd be lots of side benefits. No, seriously, if fusion becomes feasible and accessible, then we're talking about basically free energy because the cost will just drop very very quickly, and that would change society. Right. Yeah, if energy is free, then almost everything is possible. If energy is free, you can make as much drinking water as you like. Right. If energy is free, you can build whatever homes you like, you can make concrete, you can do all sorts of things. So many problems would be solved if you could get cheap energy, and fusion is the way to do it. It's just really technically tricky.
Well, I think the takeaway is that inside of each and every atom there's just an enormous amount of energy, and so that can be either very destructive or very promising. To make an incredible future.
That's right. Yeah, and so there are both positive and negative potential energies for all the scientific research.
Well, I hope that through your mind. It few some ideas in your head together it's split your view of the world.
And jokes aside, Please do not try to build a nuclear weapon in your garage. It will not end well.
And if you listen to this podcast, be very careful about what you.
Google have cod The NSSAY is always listening.
They're listening.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for joining us. See you next time.
If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact, but the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
There are children, friends, and families, walking, riding, on passing the roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to.
Get home safely.
Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too. Go Safely California from the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans.
As a United Explorer Card member, you can earn fifty thousand bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an Explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC subject to credit approval, offer subject to change.
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