Plutonium - The MOST GUARDED Metal on Earth!

plutonium in films cool dual-cell it's like a piece of silver plutonium in real life machinery cannot let you to shoot a video about plutonium at our facility because you are a citizen of another country is due to safety reasons [Music] hello everyone as you must have understood this video is going to be about such as an addictive metal as plutonium it has been shrouded in secrecy since the day it was discovered and right until our days is a history of the discoverer of the element with atomic number 94 began in 1914 when Glenn Seaborg and his team of scientists bombarded an item of uranium 238 with deterrence in a cyclotron one of the first particle accelerators as a result of this reaction is a good Neptune which turned into plutonium 238 however this isotope wasn't acceptable to spontaneous fission and wasn't suitable for making nuclear weapons which the government of the United States was in dire need of magazine half a year later the Americans managed to create isotope 259 of the new element by bombardment with neutrons of uranium salt which as later tests confirmed was more suitable for nuclear weapons than uranium 235 is in your element with atomic number 94 was named plutonium after the plant was discovered in 1930 Pluto according to the latest pacification it no longer qualifies as a planet however the element preserved its name bags in the discoverer of plutonium was not even published in scientific journals because the created element was too important from a strategic and military point of view that is why the research of this element was shrouded in secrecy both in United States and USSR just a year later after the discovery of plutonium there was launched at the famous Manhattan Project in the United States the aim of this project was to acquire a large quantity of plutonium and uranium and also to create the first atomic mount as a result of this project Americans managed to produce 6.2 kilograms of pure opal thorium in 1945 the first atomic bomb error Trinity was tested in the New Mexico State meanwhile in the USSR alongside American scientist the Soviet scientists also studied bhutanam as a radium Institute insane spatter work uranium was also bombarded with neutrons in cyclotron later Soviet lutonium was mass-produced as a first graphite nuclear reactor in Europe a one which was also known as an loeschke in the city of July being 65 present-day as yours bags M during cold war with a USA production of Soviet - atonium was an absolute secrecy and was done in higher now this reactor is disassembled and only his frame remains in place however its construction led to the creation of all Soviet Union factory MIAC scientists are working with radioactive chemicals at this factor up to this day in the past the first Soviet plutonium was produced at the a1 channel 2 per reactor and later on this type of erector found a peaceful application and led to the creation of famous director of a similar type album car 1000 which also produces a small amount of plutonium let's consider how lutonium is produced in these reactors first relatively small cylinders of enriched uranium dioxide are inserted into the corneum pipes concentration of isotope uranium-235 succeptible to decay is roughly 3% pipes with the fuel form special thermal fuel rod clusters these rods are placed into graphite blocks if you didn't know graphite is used to slow down neutrons because uranium-235 the case only when acted on by slowly moving neutrons as a result of uranium decay therefore additional neutrons which can be captured by isotope uranium 238 foreign and plutonium 239 which decays into new P Union which is also susceptible to better decay and rd8 an electron antineutrino and as a result their forms isotope plutonium 249 theoretically speaking it seems easy however there are a lot of technical nuances some of which are not disclosed yet so in three to five years their form lots of fallout is ready to fuel and it prevents further running of the chain reaction such spent fuel also contains plutonium which can be extracted from some nuclear fuel and the rods are sent to be recycled when I removed from the reactor irradiated cylinders with nuclear fuel are extremely reactive and consists of almost all short-lived isotopes from the periodic table such a cylinder can kill anyone standing closer than 1 meter away that is why spent nuclear fuel is stored in settling ponds for a few years until sooth short-lived isotopes decay and the fuel becomes less already active by the way because of the high radiation over us we spent fuel we can see them glow in water this famous Cherenkov radiation water is glowing because of the stream of fast-moving particles passing through it after sitting in water spent fuel goes through a lengthening chemical processing just like in the time of Soviet experiments the first stage of obtaining plutonium is dissolving of spent fuel in concentrated nitric acid as a result of this reaction their forms sediment is a solution consisting of different or the active elements of course I don't know the whole process however the key moment of separation of plutonium from uranium in the process called Purex is mixing of dissolved spent fuel with kerosene and treating it with tributyl phosphate and some reducing agents for instance hydrazine as a result plutonium with the oxidation state of +3 RS in the lower blue layer and uranium RS is a yellow layer with organic agents of course these are just basic stages there are a lot of them after such a separation I also don't know the exact proportions timings and other details nurse Alice plutonium itself is a quite colorful element in solutions you can see these solutions in the test tubes with plutonium sauce change course depending on their oxidation states trautonium compounds have similar chemical properties to uranium compounds don't forget the fact that it was a simulation for the video in order for you to see chemical properties of plutonium with own eyes in your real life all chemical reaction with this metal are conducted in special radiation-proof boxes which have l will eat glass which protects scientists from high radiation of decay products which spent nuclear fuel radiates russian company or SATA field some footages for me at the main nuclear facility but I'm finding it's hard to tell exactly what kind of processes they perform besides it is unknown how different isotopes of plutonium are separated in this Factory is a final product of such chemical reactions is pure plutonium dioxide which is a powder wearing in color from a raspberry red to yellow metallic plutonium can be obtained from plutonium dioxide powder which is a gray metal which easily oxidizes in the air plutonium's appearance and chemical activity is very similar to that of a rare earths metal coat serum that's why often times radio chemistry students are taught to work with plutonium by using safe regions based on serum the only difference is metallic plutonium's high density after purification plutonium from the reactor consists of 5 different isotopes though which are of particular interest plutonium isotope 248 is an extremely strong alpha emitter because it breaks down into uranium 234 sending off helium nuclei if Scala 5 is a bit more than 87 years plutonium's alpha decay can be demonstrated with the help of a such a plutonium collaboration source if we insert this plate with a small amount of plutonium 238 into special decimeter sensitive to Alfred ation you can see how quickly the number of impulses of these isotopes alpha decay is growing however if we place a sheet of paper between the decimeter and the source of alpha radiation it will completely block the alpha radiation this experiment proves that alpha rays have a weak penetration power and are completely blocked by a thin sheet of paper by the way my portable radius and the Scimitar shows the same here and open the Scimitar detect enormous Alfred d--ation and here's the sheet of paper completely blocks all alpha particles pieces of plutonium-238 can significantly heat up in a confined space because of the active decay sometimes they can become red-hot and the metal can even burn another reason why that happens is because plutonium is the worst heat conductor among all metals produced plutonium dioxide will also be heating up this property of plutonium has been used in thermoelectric generators for about 70 years self heating of plutonium-238 generates more than 500 watts per kilogram of energy and all of this heat can be converted into electricity size generators are installed in some spacecrafts for instance in such a Voyager and Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity plutonium isotopes 239 doesn't heat up as much but it is fitting for making nuclear weapons from it the only problem is that metallic polonium is quite fragile which is why it is allowed with gala after that is much easier to treat and transport it as stand now like 70 years ago plutonium is mainly used for manufactured atomic bombs here is a design of a new warhead b88 in the center is a case with a mixture of deuterium and tritium it is covered in a layer of plutonium which then coated in beryllium for creating a powerful stream of neutrons then two lenses made of explosive material are attached to the case underneath there is a secondary charge from a layer of different uranium isotopes which is connected to the primary charge with styrofoam which creates plasma when there is an explosion as a result after coating the case with a reflective layer which directs gamma rays from the primary charge to the secondary charge we have a powerful weapon hopefully it is never used so I hope that video was interesting for you and if you liked it don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel to see many more new and interesting [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Thoisoi2 - Chemical Experiments!

Views: 569,733

Keywords: Plutonium, most secret element, metal, video about plutonium, reactions with plutonium, chemical nature of plutonium, element plutonium, plutonium salts, nuclear reactors, plutonium extraction, radioactivity, radiochemistry, plutonium in reactors, isotope, neutrons, atom nucleus, secret, Thoisoi

Id: 87TpxxFdzQU

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019