On 04/04/2011 04:14 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
Patrick Shirkey wrote:
So just to make sure I am correct here... All
nuclear weapons require an
assisted explosion?
Yes, you need both high heat and high pressure to force the fissile
material into the required chain reaction.
It's categorically impossible for
Plutonium-239 to
become critical without assistance from an explosion of some other fuel
or high energy source?
You don't have super heated Pu-239 actively being created in a semi
critical chain reaction. If it gets unstable there is not enough neutron
flux to make baby go boom.
As explained here:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Criticality_accident
there have been a number of criticality accidents, but they always
create so much heat that the fissile material expands and the conditions
cease to be critical.
What we have at this moment is 870 metric tonnes of super heated fuel
working it's way to the earths mantle. As you have explained it is
possible to make Pu-239 go to fissile state with enough pressure and
speed this is now becoming entirely possible. The fuel is exploding. The
explosions create the following circumstances
1: Extreme Pressure
2: Extreme Heat
With each explosion it is likely that the perfect conditions could be
created for a fissile chain reaction. If that doesn't happen at the very
least we have massive convention explosions in the range of approx 2000
pounds constantly happening while the fuel burns it way down through the
crust. Anything that is in it's path will be vapourised or otherwise
converted to energy. Keep in mind too that the further is descends
towards the mantle the hotter it gets, the more radioactive it becomes
and the higher the atmospheric pressure goes too!
You can see from the data maps at the zamg (
http://zamg.ac.at) that the
toxic cloud is just getting worse every day. The situation is dire and
as many people who can put their minds to the solution as possible need
to be working on this as their foremost priority.
If you can and you don't then you are not worthy of living on this planet!
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.