Plutonium, the Most Dangerous Man Made Element

as you guys know uranium is known as the most dangerous metal on earth and we've made a video about it but on the periodic table there is another element that's two steps forward by the name of plutonium uranium can be found in nature but you can't find plutonium in nature because it's man-made [Music] when you look at the table of elements you see different elements that have been discovered in this year or that year but plutonium wasn't discovered but it was made in 1940 [Music] what does plutonium even look like this is how it looks like silver like a lot of other metals but extremely dangerous one of the reasons is that it's used in nuclear weapons and the other reason that it's extremely radioactive and it is also known as one of the most radioactive metals on earth when they were building the first nuclear weapons in los alamos new mexico basically the manhattan project which we made a video about they were making plutonium to put in the atomic bomb they knew that this metal is extremely radioactive and they would work on them in those laboratory glove boxes [Music] but unfortunately one day one scientist was working on plutonium but his glove had a little hole and a tiny amount of plutonium touched his hand and he immediately pulls out his hand he gets very stressed and worries that he touched plutonium and it's all over when the doctor's ransom test they noticed that the plutonium is in his blood but he didn't get sick because you weren't exposed to it for long throughout his life he would always give blood tests to make sure he's not sick or has cancer but in all tests plutonium was found in his blood but he never got sick the plutonium even 50 years after the incident was still in his blood but the doctors believed that if he was exposed a little bit longer he would have gone sick or had cancer and would have died way sooner than 50 years the amount was minimal and it didn't bother poor guy was stressed all his life because of this how's plutonium even made you guys know those fuel rods in a nuclear reactor right we talked about them in our uranium video the plutonium comes from the nuclear reactor rods as you guys know uranium's atomic number is 92 and uranium turns into plutonium which has an atomic number of 94 but the uranium that turns into plutonium is uranium-238 if we want to put it in simple terms it's basically uranium-238 capturing neutron and turning into plutonium-239 plutonium is a very dense and hard metal machining this type of metal is extremely hard because it's such a stiff metal that it breaks easily and to create nuclear weapons it has to be machined and they use it to create a sphere of plutonium for the atomic bombs this metal with this high of a density melts very quickly so the melting point is very low 639 degrees celsius to be exact and for a metal with this type of density it's extremely low let's compare to iridium one of the densest metal in the world but its melting point is 2446 degrees centigrade so plutonium is extremely weak towards heat as you guys know we talked about osmium in our iridium video iridium is very dense but osmium is a little bit more dense osmium's melting point is more than 3000 degrees centigrade [Music] but let's get back to plutonium plutonium is so radioactive that it literally gives off heat you're not supposed to touch it but if you were to touch it you would feel a hot piece of metal when plutonium starts to decay it gives off helium so if there is an old piece of plutonium in a container there will be helium gas around it and when it's giving off helium it's basically making the metal weaker and weaker you could kind of compare it to metal rusting and that is why when plutonium is used in places like this they have to make sure it's perfect another thing that makes plutonium extremely dangerous is dealing with plutonium waste to do this there has to be a specific container that could handle a lot of pressure if it's not like that it will explode as you remember plutonium gives off helium and it creates pressure in a container if the walls of a container is weak it will blow it up and radioactive waste will go everywhere [Music] alphamatic a uk chemist was working on the atomic bomb during world war ii and at that time he only had access to about 10 milligrams of plutonium and unfortunately he spills that 10 milligrams of plutonium on the desk obviously he gets bummed out not because there's dangerous material on his desk but he wasted all the plutonium they had access to and they needed it for the bomb how is he gonna collect it back he immediately brings a handsaw and cuts the table around the plutonium and he puts it in a furnace he puts a container underneath it and sets it on fire he basically burned the wood so the plutonium gets separated from the wood he separated the ash and he once again had the plutonium he needed by doing this he loses half a milligram of plutonium so he had about nine and a half milligrams left the science lab realized what he has done but they didn't do anything with him and they understood that he had to do that it's good to know that when they're working on plutonium it's in liquid form [Music] and it's also good to know that plutonium gives off a light and just like other radioactive metals it looks very cool in the dark it's kind of like those watches that glow in the dark at night but there's no plutonium in these watches they use a gas called tritium which comes from hydrogen and it glows in the dark [Music] but let's learn where the name plutonium came from if you remember in the uranium video we said the name came from the planet uranus after uranus there's a planet called neptune and on the periodic table after uranium there is the element called neptunium and after neptune there's a dwarf planet called pluto and we made a video on why it was fired from the solar system but at that time this dwarf planet was considered a planet and that is why they named the metal plutonium [Music] obviously you can't buy and sell plutonium but either way it should be bought and sold somewhere especially between governments [Music] to get one gram of plutonium you have to spend about four thousand dollars because we said plutonium does not belong in nature you have to turn uranium to plutonium and that is why it's extremely expensive [Music] in our video about iridium we said this metal is one of the most expensive metals on earth but plutonium is way more expensive but you can't buy plutonium like you can buy iridium [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: OnTen Inc

Views: 462,313

Keywords: science, cool, insane, awesome, knowledge, discovery

Id: xuSoLHUH7H4

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022