In my dieselpunk dystopia, which is retro-futuristic sci fi, the MC will discover a secret laboratory where a mad scientist is building an a-bomb. What kinds of apparati might she see? How would he store the uranium?
storing uranium in a steampunk/dieselpunk setting
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Lead containers would be a simple way to store some uranium, but having large amounts around could still be a problem. building something from carbon blocks and having the lead containers inside that would be safer. Did you provide your mad scientist with a scintillation counter? Marie Curie had trouble detecting radiation. Roengten had something, but I don't recall what it was, and that was several years earlier.
I haven't decided whether he's aware of the dangers of exposure. He's already got gnarly burns all up and down his arms--they could have come from his experiments, or they could be wounds from the bombings of the city in which he lives, and therefore unrelated.
How volatile is uranium? Would he need to store it in a special way in order to keep it from deteriorating or exploding or some such?
How volatile is uranium? Would he need to store it in a special way in order to keep it from deteriorating or exploding or some such?
I don't know how you would store it, but I do know that early scientists died of radiation poisoning because they had no idea that their uranium was emitting deadly radiation. Or they knew it was emitting radiation, but they didn't realize it was dangerous. Something like that. My husband told me about one scientist who accidentally got two pieces of (I think) uranium too close together, and they had a reaction which released enormous amounts of radiation. It killed the poor guy.
There was an episode of Stargate Atlantis where a society was working on creating nuclear bombs in hidden, underground workshops. They were unshielded, because their scientists assured them that the radiation was perfectly safe. Of course, it wasn't, and a year later, a lot of them were dead. My point being, perhaps you could use common ignorance to your advantage? Your scientist could have no idea he's working with something so deadly.
There was an episode of Stargate Atlantis where a society was working on creating nuclear bombs in hidden, underground workshops. They were unshielded, because their scientists assured them that the radiation was perfectly safe. Of course, it wasn't, and a year later, a lot of them were dead. My point being, perhaps you could use common ignorance to your advantage? Your scientist could have no idea he's working with something so deadly.
Yeah, I may go that route.
Did you know that the earliest clocks that had glowing hands or dials were painted with radium? And the women in the factories who painted the clocks would paint their own teeth and nails... they were called the radium girls. Needless to say, they were poisoned by the radium.
The question I have isn't really about the exposure to radiation, though. I'm trying to build the setting of the scene. I need to come up with some realistic-yet-dieselpunk pieces of apparatus that the scientist would be using. I'm going to have to try to read up on uranium but there's a lot of info out there, and it's hard to narrow it down to what I really need to know.
Essentially, what are the basic requirements of storing uranium?
If a steampunk/dieselpunk mad scientist was building an A-bomb, what kinds of gismos might one see in his laboratory?
He's a straight-up rubber glove, white coat, goggle-wearing mad scientist, kwim? I have already described the lab as eerily lit, with coils of electricity, kind of a-la Frankenstein/Metropolis. But I do want the description of the do-dads that are part of the building of the A-bomb to have some grounding in reality.
The actual Manhattan Project to build the first A Bomb was in the early 40s so not quite Dieselpunk but these might help - don't ask me what any of this stuff is called mind, but hopefully the pictures will give you some ideas:
http://archives.slc.edu/exhibits/maria-goeppert-mayer-exhibit/#slide1
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Science/science.htm
https://crfntserver1.crf-usa.org/crf/crfdata/hdww2007/2702/manhattan_project.htm
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=m...wrV#tbm=isch&q=manhattan+project+laboratories
http://archives.slc.edu/exhibits/maria-goeppert-mayer-exhibit/#slide1
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Science/science.htm
https://crfntserver1.crf-usa.org/crf/crfdata/hdww2007/2702/manhattan_project.htm
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=m...wrV#tbm=isch&q=manhattan+project+laboratories
In the Manhattan Project, in the course of determining the amount of uranium necessary for an explosion, they slid chunks of uranium together until a chain reaction started, which was obvious from the visible radiation emitted; that was called "Tickling the Dragon" and was done with minimal shielding.
Anyone who was making a uranium bomb would have figured out that the radiation could be dangerous. In the course of working with X-ray tubes in the 1890's Tesla reported that lumps formed in the abdomens of his assistant and himself, but the lumps later went away. Other early researchers noticed things like skin peeling and so on.
Anyone who was making a uranium bomb would have figured out that the radiation could be dangerous. In the course of working with X-ray tubes in the 1890's Tesla reported that lumps formed in the abdomens of his assistant and himself, but the lumps later went away. Other early researchers noticed things like skin peeling and so on.
There were only two smallish chunks of uranium of the table. They didn't do that with great quantities, until they put the bomb together.
You have to remember that the physicists in the Manhattan Project were pretty bright, and they weren't inclined to take unnecessary chances.
Two Manhattan Project physicists did die in criticality experiments.
That said, uranium in subcritical quantities is not particularly radioactive: the halflives of its most common isotopes are about 4.5 billion years (U-238) and 700 million years (U-235). Plutonium (24,000 years) is about 30,000 times as radioactive as U-235. Radium's halflife is only 1600 years, making it about 500,000 times as radioactive. Polonium (138 days) is a couple billion times as radioactive. The last two are the elements that probably caused the death of Marie Curie (though she did live to 67, decades after she isolated radium.)
Even a basic atomic bomb requires uranium or plutonium to be isotopically separated, a difficult process requiring ultracentrifuges or similar equipment. Many modern countries that would like to have an atomic bomb cannot muster the necessary hardware. Machining the metal is a nightmare as well - plutonium has about six solid phases and corrodes into pyrophoric compounds. And some designs require super-precise electronics to initiate the trigger explosives all at once.
Bottom line is, you're going to have to hand-wave like hell. Would you consider a dirty conventional bomb? That requires a fairly crude nuclear pile, which could in principle have been built (and partly understood) in the 19th century. Some of its radioactive products would be not have stable isotopes present, so ordinary chemical separation would work: and purification of any sort is not really needed. Just a big gob of ground-up well-aged fuel rods and some dynamite and you've lowered property values significantly. (Of course, rat poison is cheaper.)
As far as safety: Most uranium isotopes break down by alpha decay. Alpha particles (= helium ions) are blocked by practically anything (paper, human epidermis). The trick is not to ingest the stuff, as then it will be breaking down right inside your cells. This is why an assassin can safely carry a lethally-radioactive dose of polonium in his pocket, slip it in somebody's drink, and kill them by radiation poisoning. So subcritical masses of uranium could be stored in paper bags or plunked on the shelf. (Do not try this at home, boys and girls. There will also be gamma rays.)
That said, uranium in subcritical quantities is not particularly radioactive: the halflives of its most common isotopes are about 4.5 billion years (U-238) and 700 million years (U-235). Plutonium (24,000 years) is about 30,000 times as radioactive as U-235. Radium's halflife is only 1600 years, making it about 500,000 times as radioactive. Polonium (138 days) is a couple billion times as radioactive. The last two are the elements that probably caused the death of Marie Curie (though she did live to 67, decades after she isolated radium.)
Even a basic atomic bomb requires uranium or plutonium to be isotopically separated, a difficult process requiring ultracentrifuges or similar equipment. Many modern countries that would like to have an atomic bomb cannot muster the necessary hardware. Machining the metal is a nightmare as well - plutonium has about six solid phases and corrodes into pyrophoric compounds. And some designs require super-precise electronics to initiate the trigger explosives all at once.
Bottom line is, you're going to have to hand-wave like hell. Would you consider a dirty conventional bomb? That requires a fairly crude nuclear pile, which could in principle have been built (and partly understood) in the 19th century. Some of its radioactive products would be not have stable isotopes present, so ordinary chemical separation would work: and purification of any sort is not really needed. Just a big gob of ground-up well-aged fuel rods and some dynamite and you've lowered property values significantly. (Of course, rat poison is cheaper.)
As far as safety: Most uranium isotopes break down by alpha decay. Alpha particles (= helium ions) are blocked by practically anything (paper, human epidermis). The trick is not to ingest the stuff, as then it will be breaking down right inside your cells. This is why an assassin can safely carry a lethally-radioactive dose of polonium in his pocket, slip it in somebody's drink, and kill them by radiation poisoning. So subcritical masses of uranium could be stored in paper bags or plunked on the shelf. (Do not try this at home, boys and girls. There will also be gamma rays.)
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After doing some research last night (the FBI has once again gotten a ping for me, no doubt), it seems like the biggest headache involved in building a bomb like Little Boy or Fat Man is processing the uranium or plutonium. If I understand what I've read, it would take tons of ore and a huge facility to produce a small amount for one bomb. Having determined that, I'm thinking about introducing a second scientist at a different facility, and have the mad scientist steal the plutonium this second scientist managed to process. My mad scientist's laboratory isn't that large, and as it has already been described several times in the first two books in the trilogy, I can't change it now, unfortunately.
So now I have some new questions.
I read about Louis Slotin's experiments with the two half-spheres of plutonium, and the subsequent criticality accident that killed him.
1) The two half-spheres were different sizes. Why? Can I make them the same size, or would that not work? I ask just so I know what kind of leeway I have--I can certainly have them be different sizes if that's what's required.
2) If you were to steal these half-spheres, I assume you'd want to transport them separately, because if they touch there's a reaction, right?
3) Can I have scientist #2 process plutonium for the purposes of creating a new energy source rather than to create a weapon, or is that just apples and oranges?
I need for the weapon that the mad scientist in the smaller lab is creating to be powerful enough to destroy an island city. As I understand it (and I haven't done much reading on this so I realize I could be way off base) a dirty bomb wouldn't have that kind of power. Otherwise, I like the idea of the dirty bomb. I do want the bomb to be nuclear, as I'm playing with the boundary between dieselpunk and atompunk in this book. The three books in the trilogy are meant to show a progression in time, and, to an extent, technology.
I also don't intend to have the bomb dropped from a plane. Rather, antagonist plans to set it off in the mad scientist's lab, which is under the targeted city. I don't know whether there are reasons why I shouldn't base the design on early A-bombs as a result. Please let me know, if so. If necessary I can rethink the antagonist's plan and go with a plane dropping the bomb, it just means a lot more complications for the antagonist and makes stopping him a lot easier for the mcs... I'd rather it be the other way around.
Thanks for all your help, everyone!
So now I have some new questions.
I read about Louis Slotin's experiments with the two half-spheres of plutonium, and the subsequent criticality accident that killed him.
1) The two half-spheres were different sizes. Why? Can I make them the same size, or would that not work? I ask just so I know what kind of leeway I have--I can certainly have them be different sizes if that's what's required.
2) If you were to steal these half-spheres, I assume you'd want to transport them separately, because if they touch there's a reaction, right?
3) Can I have scientist #2 process plutonium for the purposes of creating a new energy source rather than to create a weapon, or is that just apples and oranges?
I need for the weapon that the mad scientist in the smaller lab is creating to be powerful enough to destroy an island city. As I understand it (and I haven't done much reading on this so I realize I could be way off base) a dirty bomb wouldn't have that kind of power. Otherwise, I like the idea of the dirty bomb. I do want the bomb to be nuclear, as I'm playing with the boundary between dieselpunk and atompunk in this book. The three books in the trilogy are meant to show a progression in time, and, to an extent, technology.
I also don't intend to have the bomb dropped from a plane. Rather, antagonist plans to set it off in the mad scientist's lab, which is under the targeted city. I don't know whether there are reasons why I shouldn't base the design on early A-bombs as a result. Please let me know, if so. If necessary I can rethink the antagonist's plan and go with a plane dropping the bomb, it just means a lot more complications for the antagonist and makes stopping him a lot easier for the mcs... I'd rather it be the other way around.
Thanks for all your help, everyone!
I read about Louis Slotin's experiments with the two half-spheres of plutonium
The experiment involved a solid sphere of plutonium (actually a plutonium alloy) and two hollow hemispheres of beryllium. These hemispheres are not radioactive, but reflect neutrons back into the plutonium, thus making capture more likely. (Imagine taking a desk lamp with a 100-watt incandescent light bulb and wrapping it in a blanket. The heat would build up and might well start a fire. It's the same principle.) In Slotin's case, the chain reaction was enough to yield a fatal level of radiation, but was still not an explosion. If there had been a true atomic explosion, it would have happened in microseconds, not seconds, and he would have had no time to disrupt it. If the chain reaction had been more intense, it might have vaporized the core, killing everybody in the room, but then stopped. This is still not an atomic bomb: that method won't work to start a true atomic explosion, because the core will be destroyed first. The explosion must start fast enough that inertia keeps the plutonium together until a significant proportion of it has fissioned - despite its insane temperature. This is not easy.
When that particular sphere (nicknamed the Demon Core, because it was involved in both lab fatalities) was exploded after the war at Bikini Atoll, it was surrounded by a layer of explosive and crushed symmetrically to well below its original size, as if it were made of foam rubber. The suddenly-closer plutonium nuclei would have captured enough neutrons to start a very vigorous chain reaction, enough to fission a significant proportion of the plutonium before the energy released could blow it apart. Again, do not try this at home.
There is another method (used, IIRC, with uranium) that involves assembling a spherical critical mass, very fast, out of two pieces. An extra neutron source is used to get enough neutrons instantly. This is very tricky also.
The experiment involved a solid sphere of plutonium (actually a plutonium alloy) and two hollow hemispheres of beryllium. These hemispheres are not radioactive, but reflect neutrons back into the plutonium, thus making capture more likely. (Imagine taking a desk lamp with a 100-watt incandescent light bulb and wrapping it in a blanket. The heat would build up and might well start a fire. It's the same principle.) In Slotin's case, the chain reaction was enough to yield a fatal level of radiation, but was still not an explosion. If there had been a true atomic explosion, it would have happened in microseconds, not seconds, and he would have had no time to disrupt it. If the chain reaction had been more intense, it might have vaporized the core, killing everybody in the room, but then stopped. This is still not an atomic bomb: that method won't work to start a true atomic explosion, because the core will be destroyed first. The explosion must start fast enough that inertia keeps the plutonium together until a significant proportion of it has fissioned - despite its insane temperature. This is not easy.
When that particular sphere (nicknamed the Demon Core, because it was involved in both lab fatalities) was exploded after the war at Bikini Atoll, it was surrounded by a layer of explosive and crushed symmetrically to well below its original size, as if it were made of foam rubber. The suddenly-closer plutonium nuclei would have captured enough neutrons to start a very vigorous chain reaction, enough to fission a significant proportion of the plutonium before the energy released could blow it apart. Again, do not try this at home.
There is another method (used, IIRC, with uranium) that involves assembling a spherical critical mass, very fast, out of two pieces. An extra neutron source is used to get enough neutrons instantly. This is very tricky also.
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One more point, after reading recent postings:
Plutonium does not come (except in tiny traces) from ore - it has to be created using an atomic pile, cyclotron, or other nuclear technology. This is lower technology than separating specific isotopes, but still needs to be done.
Plutonium does not come (except in tiny traces) from ore - it has to be created using an atomic pile, cyclotron, or other nuclear technology. This is lower technology than separating specific isotopes, but still needs to be done.
Robert, thank you again. It must be obvious how out of my element (ha-ha) I am with this. I want to try to understand it all better, but in the end I just have to have my facts straight enough so that what I describe in the novel makes sense to people who know how it all works better than I do.
Okay, so please advise me. For my story, I need for the mad scientist--let's call him S#1--to build an A-bomb (again, I'm trying to allude to atompunk so I do think it needs to be an A-bomb). After everything I read last night--much of which I clearly didn't understand correctly
--I determined that he'd need to get his radioactive material from some other scientist (let's call him S#2). That works fine for me, as I can involve the MC in the dangerous theft of that material.
I read about the gun mechanism for Little Boy, and I think I understood how that worked. But I liked the look of the contraption Slotin was working with, so I was going to base the design of S#1's bomb on Fat Man, instead. It made more sense to me that S#2 would be using the Slotin set up to test the reactions of plutonium for whatever research he was doing, and that S#1 could take the two hemispheres of what I thought was plutonium and use them in a bomb. Now I'm pretty sure I really didn't understand Slotin's contraption at all. But the demon core is the same as the kind that was used in Fat Man, right?
Anyway, what would you advise me to use as a model of the bomb S#1 builds? Can you describe a perhaps more simple construction that could theoretically work as a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city?
I'm going to need a way to disarm it, eventually. The story I have in mind, at least at this point, would have the MC helping S#1 acquire the material for the bomb, without really understanding what it's going to do. Then as the bomb is about to be used, the MC would race to disarm it.
Okay, so please advise me. For my story, I need for the mad scientist--let's call him S#1--to build an A-bomb (again, I'm trying to allude to atompunk so I do think it needs to be an A-bomb). After everything I read last night--much of which I clearly didn't understand correctly
--I determined that he'd need to get his radioactive material from some other scientist (let's call him S#2). That works fine for me, as I can involve the MC in the dangerous theft of that material. I read about the gun mechanism for Little Boy, and I think I understood how that worked. But I liked the look of the contraption Slotin was working with, so I was going to base the design of S#1's bomb on Fat Man, instead. It made more sense to me that S#2 would be using the Slotin set up to test the reactions of plutonium for whatever research he was doing, and that S#1 could take the two hemispheres of what I thought was plutonium and use them in a bomb. Now I'm pretty sure I really didn't understand Slotin's contraption at all. But the demon core is the same as the kind that was used in Fat Man, right?
Anyway, what would you advise me to use as a model of the bomb S#1 builds? Can you describe a perhaps more simple construction that could theoretically work as a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city?
I'm going to need a way to disarm it, eventually. The story I have in mind, at least at this point, would have the MC helping S#1 acquire the material for the bomb, without really understanding what it's going to do. Then as the bomb is about to be used, the MC would race to disarm it.
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If you want to keep it somewhat logical and sequential, then S1 would be more likely to build a uranium bomb, because separating uranium is simpler than producing plutonium. If they were at the stage where plutonium was being produced in major quantities, then he would know more about radiation an its dangers. The problem with an implosion bomb is getting all of the charges to go off at once, but they did it then on the first try, so S1 might as well.
That core was eventually used in a bomb set off in the Bikini series, so yes it was the same kind of core. The wikipedia article has a description that is adequate for a piece of fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
That core was eventually used in a bomb set off in the Bikini series, so yes it was the same kind of core. The wikipedia article has a description that is adequate for a piece of fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
The best source I know on how to build a plausible (as opposed to workable) A-bomb with minimal equipment is Nicholas Freeling's novel Gadget. Freeling uses a gun mechanism. Forsyth's The Fist of God and Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears are also good. In the first and third, the bomb actually goes off and both authors do a nanosecond-by-nanosecond description; both are largely accurate. All three assume fissionable material purified by somebody else and (IIRC) disposable technical workers. Clancy ups the stakes to an H-bomb but the thermonuclear stage fails.
Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol describes a military-made "tab A into slot B" kit for a gun-type(?) nuke designed to be smuggled into another country and assembled there.
Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol describes a military-made "tab A into slot B" kit for a gun-type(?) nuke designed to be smuggled into another country and assembled there.
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Thank you all again for your help.
I think I have enough to go on for now. I'll be back, no doubt, as I run into walls trying to describe things correctly.
I think I have enough to go on for now. I'll be back, no doubt, as I run into walls trying to describe things correctly.
Building an atomic bomb is brain-bendingly complex stuff. The Discovery Channel recently had a special called 'How We Built the Bomb" that covers it pretty well. Here is a clip: https://vimeo.com/125638697
As others have said, you can store uranium pretty easily. A lead-lined bucket or box would work fine. Plutonium is another animal altogether and its creation was necessary for providing the runaway reaction needed for the first bombs.
The detonation mechanism was also eye-poppingly complex. Fortunately, in books you can take a nuclear reactor control room like this:
and turn it into something cool like this:
Don't forget to have a mutant or ten!
The earliest atom bombs were thousands of pounds and required some of our biggest bombers to lug around. For a so-called "suitcase" bomb you will probably want to hand wave most of its construction. Heck, you could do what many authors before you have done and talk about your Mad Scientist's advances into the forbidden Q-Ray technology. Why, it's unthinkable that any decent scientist would spend time working on making a Q-Device after the World Governing Council outlawed that research area. It's monstrous! He's gone mad, MAD I tell you! As everyone in the scientific community knows, Q-Rays are capable of fundamentally altering the bonds between molecules. If someone turned that into a weapon, who knows what devastation they could unleash!
Just a thought, since you have an alternate timeline and technology base to start with, it's fine to dream up a Big Bad Threat that sounds like something from this world but doesn't have to fit in with anything in real life.
As others have said, you can store uranium pretty easily. A lead-lined bucket or box would work fine. Plutonium is another animal altogether and its creation was necessary for providing the runaway reaction needed for the first bombs.
The detonation mechanism was also eye-poppingly complex. Fortunately, in books you can take a nuclear reactor control room like this:
and turn it into something cool like this:
Don't forget to have a mutant or ten!
The earliest atom bombs were thousands of pounds and required some of our biggest bombers to lug around. For a so-called "suitcase" bomb you will probably want to hand wave most of its construction. Heck, you could do what many authors before you have done and talk about your Mad Scientist's advances into the forbidden Q-Ray technology. Why, it's unthinkable that any decent scientist would spend time working on making a Q-Device after the World Governing Council outlawed that research area. It's monstrous! He's gone mad, MAD I tell you! As everyone in the scientific community knows, Q-Rays are capable of fundamentally altering the bonds between molecules. If someone turned that into a weapon, who knows what devastation they could unleash!
Just a thought, since you have an alternate timeline and technology base to start with, it's fine to dream up a Big Bad Threat that sounds like something from this world but doesn't have to fit in with anything in real life.
Not by much. The uranium you need to produce a fission chain-reaction is isotope U235, which constitutes only a minuscule fraction of naturally-occurring uranium, the dominant isotope being U238, which is not fissionable. To separate U235 from U238, you take advantage of the very slight difference in isotopic weight, but to do that involves making uranium fluoride gas, and running that through many many many centrifuging operations with pretty high-tech equipment. That's the sort of stuff we're pissed off at Iran for obtaining.
Frankly, this all sounds implausible, even for the world of steampunk fantasy.
caw
Thank you! It's fun to get into the spirit of those old stories, isn' t it?
I actually wasn't trying to create a small bomb in a suitcase... what with people here describing how big everything has to be, I'm starting to think the bomb will be the whole lab.
I actually wasn't trying to create a small bomb in a suitcase... what with people here describing how big everything has to be, I'm starting to think the bomb will be the whole lab.