[extropy-chat] Energy & Global Warming [was: Partisans and EP]

[spike]

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
...
> 
> I don't think the peak is that fine grained. I would expect the uranium
> atoms (or rather, uranyl ions) to have a Maxwellian distribution with a
> mean at sqrt(3*T*k/m). So for T=300 K, k=1.3805e-23 J/K and
> m=340.90/6.022e23=5.66091e-22 I get 4.68485696 m/s! So the target is
> almost standing still. Neutron energies can apparently be in the MeV
> range, which would make the difference practically nil... Anders Sandberg

Cool calculation Anders!  The neutrons that are captured hafta be much lower
energy than MeV if I understand the process correctly.  The reason a light
water reactor doesn't create much plutonium is that the light hydrogen
doesn't slow the neutrons enough for effective capture by the uranium atoms.
But the heavy water reactors do.

But I am outta my field of expertise here.

This all gets back around to why Iran is having such a hard time convincing
the world that they are really not making bombs, but rather merely want to
make power: if that were the case they would be building simpler and cheaper
light water reactors only.  But Iran is planning heavy water reactors, which
are needed to make plutonium, which is needed to make bombs, or rather the
kinds of bombs that can be carried on missiles.

And those comments about Israel being wiped off the map probably don't help.

spike