Roland randomly picked out a lead box, opened the lid, and held the silver-white metal block in his hand, feeling its heavy weight. Before it was stimulated, it was no different from a piece of pure iron. As long as one did not lick it, it was basically harmless. If one didn't have a deep enough understanding of it, it would be difficult to imagine just how much power was hidden in its small body just by looking at its appearance.
It was with this that human beings first touched the threshold of mass-energy conversion.
Compared with all the chemical gunpowder before, this step could be said to be a new step.
Roland roughly counted the number of lead boxes and found that there were about 50 of them. Excluding the weight of the containers, each box contained one kilogram of uranium 235, which was nearly 100% pure.
And there was more than one lead box like this in the room.
If you put all of them together …
Perhaps the Research Institute would really be "high-energy".
"How do we use these things to turn them into the" Glory of the Sun "that you mentioned before?" Nightingale asked curiously. "Do we make them into special machines or ignite them? I always feel that they won't burn. "
"You want to know?" Roland could not help laughing. "It's simpler than you think. Just pile the metal blocks in the box together, and they'll automatically emit light and heat. The uranium in this box alone is enough to raze Neverwinter to the ground. That's why Lucia has such a heavy responsibility. If she shakes her hand... "
Suddenly, the room fell into a dead silence.
Lucia covered her mouth with her hand, and her eyes were filled with horror.
"... No way." After a while, Azima said incredulously, "You mean, if we're not careful, we may destroy the whole city?"
Nightingale dashed forward, snatched the lead box from Roland's hand, and put it back into the box. Then she grabbed his hand and dragged him out.
"Hey... wait, what are you going to do?"
"Of course!" Nightingale said anxiously. "Of course I'm going to take you out of the city and then let someone carry these things away! Lucia, inform Wendy and ask her to contact the Administrative Office! "
"I... I'll also go to Her Highness Tilly." Azima gritted her teeth. "Only she can summon the Sleeping Spell."
"Stop — I was joking —"
The room was suddenly in chaos. Roland had to spend some time to calm everyone down.
"Are you sure you're just joking?" Nightingale snapped.
"Ahem, of course … I'm just talking about the theory," he quickly added. "But in reality, it's not that easy to activate it. Even if I do my best, I can't guarantee success."
Lucia heaved a sigh of relief and said, "Your Majesty... you scared me to death."
"This isn't funny." Nightingale glared at him. "If Vendy and Scroll heard this, whether it's a joke or not —"
"I'm afraid they'll ask us to move the new research institute far away from Neverwinter," Roland said helplessly.
"As long as you know, or we can move you to a safe place."
"Well, forget what I said before..." He cleared his throat. "As long as you don't say anything, Vendy and Scroll won't know."
"Maybe a bird has already heard it." Nightingale looked out of the window.
"Intercept the message and I'll pay you a bottle of Chaos Drink," Roland said without hesitation.
"Deal." She blinked and disappeared in front of the three people.
Looking at Lucia and Azima, who were dumbfounded, Roland shrugged and said, "Uh... don't mind it. It was part of the joke."
After a while, Nightingale returned to the room. "No suspicious targets were found, but the reward —"
"It's still valid."
Lucia's expression finally softened. She hummed a tune and chewed on dried fish.
"Well... Your Majesty," Azima said with a serious face after a moment of hesitation. "What you said before wasn't all a joke, was it? When you made the rules, you repeatedly emphasized the importance of weight. In order to avoid confusion or mismeasurement, you even controlled the weight of each lead box to be exactly four kilograms. When weighing, it must be together with the container. This way, you can ensure that the metal pieces in the box are equal. " She paused. "Also, you said that if there was an accident in the research institute, or if there were signs of intruders, the first thing to do was to inform the guards to seal off the scene, and then immediately return to the castle to report, instead of entering the courtyard to check the situation. This proves... that they are indeed dangerous, right? "
Roland looked at her in surprise. "You have good observation skills. You're basically right. In addition to toxicity, weight is also a key factor. That's why they were placed separately. " To be able to determine the nature of the extract from the rules and regulations, it could be said that she was cautious and meticulous. It was precisely this meticulousness that allowed her to awaken the ability to trace the source … "But weight alone can only endanger the research institute. If I want to turn it into a weapon against the demons, I need something else."
"Those particles that are placed separately?" Azima quickly realized what was going on.
"Not exactly, but at least half of it."
The composition of natural uranium was very complicated. In addition to uranium compounds, it was usually accompanied by many radioactive substances. Most of them were secondary products of decay. Some of them had completely lost their radioactivity and became stable, while others were still in the process of decay. Although the radioactive people had refined the ore when they built the Temple of the Cursed, the basic composition was still the same, which could be seen from Lucia's results.
Uranium-238, which could not be used as a weapon, could be recognized by the Magic Ceremony Cube and was almost as effective as Uranium-235. Therefore, all of it was sent to the backyard of the North Slope Mountain.
Uranium-235, which could be regarded as a weapon if its purity was above 90%, was very low in nature, accounting for only 1% of natural uranium. Therefore, the first obstacle for those who wanted to use the "brilliant radiation" route was refining it, which was also a hurdle that most people could not overcome.
However, it was not the rarest element. Its subsequent decay products, such as thorium, radium, radon, and polonium, were all extremely rare. What Roland needed was the naturally occurring Polonium 210, which was the most common isotope in the plutonium family.
As the flower of his motherland, Roland was very familiar with radium and polonium. Madame Curie, who had repeatedly mentioned them in textbooks, was famous for discovering them. Although the half-life of polonium-210 was only more than a hundred days and its content was appallingly low, Madame Curie's many attempts to extract it had failed, she still pointed out its existence from the strong radioactivity shown by the ore solution.
Both radium and polonium could be used to make neutron sources, which was related to the second obstacle of the "brilliant radiation": detonation.
The principle of the first generation of nuclear weapons was very simple. It could be summed up in one sentence: the fission of nuclides releases energy. In the case of uranium, after uranium-235 received a neutron, it would be excited into unstable uranium-236, and then split into two lighter nuclides and more free neutrons. The mass difference between the two would be converted into energy.
Obviously, the released neutrons would hit other nuclides, and the cycle would continue, forming a chain reaction. At the same time, a huge burst of energy would be no different from an explosion.
However, in the microscopic world, the gap between atomic nuclei was as wide as heaven and earth. As was written in textbooks, if the atom was seen as a football field, then the nucleus was just an ant on it. If one was unlucky, the neutron would soon fly out of the field, and the reaction would stop. To ensure that every ant would be hit, it was necessary to pile up enough football fields around it to ensure that no matter which direction the neutron flew in, there would be an ant in its path.
Reflected in the macroscopic world, it was obvious that "mass" and "shape."
In fact, the critical mass was not a fixed value. For example, the probability of being hit by a football field arranged in a straight line was obviously lower than that of a stacked football field. The specific result required a lot of calculations based on the shape of the critical mass. Roland had even heard an anecdote that someone had lost a war because of a wrong calculation. Of course, as a latecomer who stood on the shoulders of giants, he naturally did not have to start from scratch. Countless experiments had proved that the critical mass was the smallest when the object was spherical, and uranium-235 was 52 kilograms.
He was already cautious enough to limit the amount of uranium in each lead box to one kilogram.
However, the so-called critical mass was not fixed. If the area of the football field could be greatly reduced, or if enough extra neutrons were provided for the nuclides, the critical mass would be greatly reduced. The former was the principle of the internal explosion bomb. The detonator was placed outside the bomb, and when it exploded, the reactants would be squeezed together, causing the density to increase sharply and surpass the critical mass. With the current technology in Neverwinter, it was too difficult to calculate the critical mass of an irregular unit or to accurately control the detonation of an explosive. Therefore, Roland set his sights on the latter.
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