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

And while we're at it . . .

[Maradine]

. . . let's be alarmist about it, because the info didn't exist anywhere else.

Errors I noticed

[Profane MuthaFucka]

-Enrichment levels for uranium meant for power plants is about 20% U-235, not 3%.
-The gun and implosion types of bombs aren't tied to the fissile type. You could use either type with either plutonium or uranium.
-They didn't mention confinement of the reaction on the gun type of bomb. If you don't try to hold it together with a heavy bomb casing, the bomb will blow itself apart as soon as fission begins, resulting in a really low yield.

If you were to try to build a bomb from these instructions, it wouldn't work.