Nuclear Fuel How-To

ATMosby writes "The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons." From the article: "Uranium is the basic raw material of both civilian and military nuclear programmes. It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores. When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission."

Comments

Where does the fuel come from?

[Colin Smith]

Something that gets skipped over. At the moment, Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan are the largest producers.

I'm not sure being a fuel producer is necessarily a good thing given the USA's penchant for invading other countries. And Canada is so close after all.

No formal training

[amightywind]

Of course, if a Slashdotter with no formal training in nuclear science can desribe how bombs are built, is there any question as to why nuclear materials are carefully controlled?

If I remember correctly you are a charlatan whose deep knowledge of nuclear science comes from a Wikipedia page. You should not be so quick to separate yourself from those lowly slashdotters with no formal training.

slashdot is a national security threat

[thrashor]

How long until the FBI makes a request to the secret Patriot Act court for all user accounts and weblogs from slashdot? At first this sounds like a humorous and rediculous comment, until you think that one of the powers that the Patriot Act gave to the feds was the ability to look at public library records to see who has been borrowing books on aviation, chemistry, nuclear weapons, and other suspicious subjects. Does freedom have to be the price of security?