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Nuclear energy comes from transformation of the nucleus. Nuclear technology induces the transformation of a high energy nucleus to a lower energy nucleus releasing energy.Given the nature of the material world elements that are lighter than 56 nucleons (Iron) release energy when they fuse together. Elements that are heavier than 56 nucleons release energy when they break apart.The first process is called fusion. The second process is called fission.There is one naturally fissile material in nature Uranium 235. This isotope of Uranium is only 0.72% of all Uranium and must be enriched to make a fission device. Two other materials are artificially fissile. These are called fertile materials. That is they serve as source material to make fissile material that doesn’t occur in nature. These work by putting the fertile material in an environment where they pick up neutrons and transform into fissile materials.Uranium isotope 238 (the number counts the nucleons in the nucleus) converts to Plutonium 239 after it absorbs one neutron. Since nearly all the remaining natural uranium is of this type, breeding Plutonium is essential to making low cost nuclear energy. Plutonium is also used in atomic bomb construction and its use is prohibited generally.Thorium 232 converts to Uranium 233 after it absorbs a neutron. Since all Thorium of this type and thorium is as common as lead, this is the absolute lowest cost source of energy on the planet. And other planets as well.Humanity has generally ignored thorium since it does not efficiently produce atomic bombs.Fusion was the first nuclear reaction induced by humanity. John Cockcroft and Earnest Walton induced the fusion of deuterium in 1932. This was later perfected by Ulrich Jetter in 1940 with the Jetter cycleHere a neutron was absorbed by Lithium 6 to produce Helium 4 and Hydrogen 3 (Tritium) releasing 2.4 MeV of energy. The energy was nearly equally divided between the two nuclei, leaving the tritium with far more than enough energy to promptly fuse with any Deuterium (Hydrogen 2) forming another Helium 4 nucleus and giving the neutron back, releasing another 17.6 MeV of energy!!The net reaction isLi-6 + D → 2 He-4 + 22.4 MeVThis produces 270.2 trillion joules per kg of material, and the material is quite cheap and easily available. 7.5% of all lithium is lithium 6 and we produce enough of it to produce 5x as much energy as we produce today with zero pollution.Now lithium deuteride masses about 850 kg/m3. Its a powder with a low melting point. It is easily sintered and shaped and moulded.The problem from an energy use point of view is that most of the last step has the energy in the neutron. Furthermore, the process doesn’t grow like fission. However, if you add a method to take the energetic neutron and convert it to more non neutron energy, and make more low energy neutrons with it, then you can create a pseudo fission process. This entails adding Beryllium and Boron to the mix.The preparation, use purchase or selling of Lithium-6 is highly restricted and aspects of cross section at various energies not clearly available due to antiproliferation concerns of nuclear technology. This despite the fact that Korea has a hydrogen bomb.Commercial Fusion ReactorBack in 1956 Shell Geophysicist Marion King Hubbert predicted that oil output would peak in the USA by 1970 and in the world by 2000. In response to that dire prediction Leo Strauss AEC chair said that by 1970 energy would be too cheap to meter. He pointed to the findings of Project Sherwood which outlined the commercial use of Jetter cycle reactors. Brookings Institute outlined the following development;1950s - molten salt reactor 900 C 100 MW scale (HTRE-3)1960s - nuclear light bulb 4000 C 1 GW-10 GW scale (NERVA)1970s - nuclear pulse 100,000 C 100 GW-1000 GW scale (ORION)Sherwood scientists were asked to give testimony to Congress. They unfortunately died in a freak helicopter accident in the Pacific Range during a bomb test. Strauss testified in their stead. He wasn’t asked about Sherwood, but was caught up in some sort of financial misadventure at the AEC. This spawned the Strauss Affair and caused Eisenhower to dismiss him. At the same time Hubbert was dismissed from Shell citing his erroneous prediction. Eisenhower tapped energy executives from the major oil companies to look at the energy problem and they concluded the USA didn’t have to worry about the future of oil we had 100s of years of current demand in the US all we had to do was go to the Middle East to get it out of the deserts. The nomads there wouldn’t mind. Easy peasy. Democratic Congressmen weren’t so easily mollified. JFK congressman from Massachusetts wondered if the Soviets wouldn’t spend the resources to develop alternatives to oil since the USA surely would not. There was a move to look more closely into this energy thing by Congress. Eisenhower said no one would beat the USA in technology. Then Sputnik was orbited by the Soviets. This catapaulted the little known Congressman John Kennedy into the national spotlight. Then, Vermont Senator Joseph McCarthy began hearings looking into the problem with Soviet influence in the USA. In our media, our industry and in our government. Did they steal our rocket secrets like they stole our atomic secrets? This was the beginning of the Red Scare. Energy was quickly forgotten.Hot fusion research has dominated fusion energy research since that time. Low Energy Nuclear Reactions that might be possible with other Jetter type cycles have not been discussed at all. Despite the fact there are a lot of intriguing possibilities.History of Nuclear EnergyBut how did we get to know all this stuff about nuclear energy? It really has nothing to do with relativity, except a very smart guy Albert Einstein explained that a little bit of mass makes a helluva lot of energy.It also had nothing to do with quantum theory, which is really the basis of chemistry and how electrons dance around the atom. This gives a lot of predictions related to electrical and optical properties as well.Nuclear theory as such is not taught at the same level in any sensible way due to anti-proliferation concerns. Nuclear science at least open nuclear science is really just a set of recipes and procedures that are permitted to be known.So, its only what you can glean from the public literature and a careful review of the history of the process that you get any idea of why things do what they do.Physicists have moved on to much higher energy levels beyond anything atomic nuclei can give.BeginningsMarie and Pierre Curie along with Henri Becquerel received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 for their discovery of spontaneous radioactivity and properly characterising it with a half life.The source of energy was mysterious until another fellow A. Einstein began thinking about the unusual results produced by two Case Western University fellows Michelson and Morley.Einstein figured out that the speed of light is constant in nature and that time dilated as you changed speed. Minkowski saw this as a sort of rotation in 4 dimensional spacetime.This insight had a lot of implications.It explained Michelson & Morley’s null result. It explained Lorentz contraction. It also explained the advancing perihelion of Mercury. Einstein also made new predictions. The bending of light beams as they pass a massive object like the sun. This was later confirmed by Eddington. One of the most interesting predictions is that in addition to the kinetic energy that Newton calculatedE = 1/2 * Mass * (Velocity)^2with another term - the rest mass energyE = Mass * (Speed of Light)^2 → E=mc2Could this be where the tremendous energy of the radium atom came from?Well, that’s what everyone wanted to know back in the day. So, A. Einstein was invited to the prestigious 1911 Solvay conference to discuss this possibility.Einstein's Letter to Marie Curie: Ignore the HatersFrom Biography: Historical & Celebrity ProfilesOn April 19, 1906, Marie Curie was widowed by an accident all the more tragic for its improbability.While crossing a busy Parisian street on a rainy night, Pierre slipped, fell under a horse-drawn cart, and was killed instantly. Curie grieved for years.In 1910, she found solace in Pierre’s protégé - a young physics professor named Paul Langevin, married to but separated from a woman who physically abused him. They became lovers.Enraged, Langevin’s wife hired someone to break into the apartment where the two met and steal their love letters, which she promptly leaked to the press.The press eviscerated Curie and portrayed her as“a foreign Jewish homewrecker”.In 1911, Albert Einstein wrote a Marie Curie encouraging her to ignore all the unfounded criticism she was facing at the time:Highly esteemed Mrs. Curie,Do not laugh at me for writing you without having anything sensible to say.But I am so enraged by the base manner in which the public is presently daring to concern itself with you that I absolutely must give vent to this feeling.However, I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble, whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism!I am impelled to tell you how much I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and that I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance in Brussels.Anyone who does not number among these reptiles is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact.If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.With most amicable regards to you, Langevin, and Perrin, yours very truly,A. Einstein23 November 1911So, for those keeping track, humanity had discovered spontaneous radioactivity, wondered where the energy was coming from, and then figured it was spontaneous conversion of mass to energy.Now, how to control it?Meet this fellow;Leo Szilard was born in Budapest Hungary in 1898 and was drafted into the Hungarian army in 1916. Following the war Hungary became a Soviet state and Szilard went to Berlin Christmas day 1919. He joined is brother Bela at the Berlin Institute of Technology but became bored with Engineering. He was fascinated by physics. So, he switched to Friedrech Wilhelm University where he studied under Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Walter Nernst, and others.Einstein gave Szilard top honours for his PhD Thesis in 1922, resolving a long-standing puzzle in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Szilard recognised the connection between thermodynamics and information theory.In 1928 he submitted a patent for a linear accelerator. (A. Einstein was a former patent clerk). In 1929 he invented the cyclotron and the electron microscope. By 1930 Szilard had received his German citizenship, but was uneasy about the political landscape of Germany. When Hitler rose to power in January 30, 1933 he fled Europe and moved to London.Wikipedia Says of His Conception of the Chain ReactionThis is such a wonderful story, I thought I would put it down in its entirety so more people would read it! The story leads from the conceptual idea whilst crossing the street to the Atom Bomb a decade later all during upheaval and war.On the morning of September 12, 1933, Szilard read an article in The Times summarizing a speech given by Lord Rutherford in which Rutherford rejected the feasibility of using atomic energy for practical purposes. The speech remarked specifically on the recent 1932 work of his students, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles, by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed.Rutherford went on to say:We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine. But the subject was scientifically interesting because it gave insight into the atoms.Szilard was so annoyed at Rutherford's dismissal that, on the same day, he conceived of the idea of nuclear chain reaction (analogous to a chemical chain reaction), using recently discovered neutrons. The idea did not use the mechanism of nuclear fission, which was not yet discovered, but Szilard realized that if neutrons could initiate any sort of energy-producing nuclear reaction, such as the one that had occurred in lithium, and could be produced themselves by the same reaction, energy might be obtained with little input, since the reaction would be self-sustainingSzilard filed for a patent on the concept of the neutron-induced nuclear chain reaction in 1933, which was granted in 1936. Szilard was able to assign the patent to the British Admiralty to ensure its secrecy, which he did. Consequently, his patent was not published until 1949 when the relevant parts of the Patents and Designs Act (1907, UK) where repealed. Richard Rhodes described Szilard's moment of inspiration:In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come.In early 1934, Szilard began working at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Working with a young physicist on the hospital staff, Thomas A. Chalmers, he began studying radioactive isotopes for medical purposes. It was known that bombarding elements with neutrons could produce either heavier isotopes of an element, or a heavier element, a phenomenon known as the Fermi Effect after its discoverer, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. When they bombarded ethyl iodide with neutrons produced by a radon–beryllium source, they found that the heavier radioactive isotopes of iodine separated from the compound. Thus, they had discovered a means of isotope separation. This method became known as the Szilard–Chalmers effect, and was widely used in the preparation of medical isotopes. He also attempted unsuccessfully to create a nuclear chain reaction using beryllium by bombarding it with X-rays.Manhattan ProjectColumbia UniversitySzilard visited Béla and Rose and her husband Roland (Lorand) Detre, in Switzerland in September 1937. After a rainstorm, he and his siblings spent an afternoon in an unsuccessful attempt to build a prototype collapsible umbrella. One reason for the visit was that he had decided to emigrate to the United States, as he believed that another war in Europe was inevitable and imminent. He reached New York on the liner RMS Franconia on January 2, 1938.Over the next few months he moved from place to place, conducting research with Maurice Goldhaber at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and then the University of Chicago, University of Michigan and the University of Rochester, where he undertook experiments with indium but again failed to initiate a chain reaction.Army Intelligence report on Enrico Fermi and Leo SzilardIn November 1938, Szilard moved to New York City, taking a room at the King's Crown Hotel near Columbia University. He encountered John R. Dunning, who invited him to speak about his research at an afternoon seminar in January 1939.That month, Niels Bohr brought news to New York of the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner, and Otto Frisch. When Szilard found out about it on a visit to Wigner at Princeton University, he immediately realized that uranium might be the element capable of sustaining a chain reaction.Unable to convince Fermi that this was the case, Szilard set out on his own. He obtained permission from the head of the Physics Department at Columbia, George B. Pegram, to use a laboratory for three months. To fund his experiment, he borrowed $2,000 from a fellow inventor, Benjamin Liebowitz. He wired Frederick Lindemann at Oxford and asked him to send a beryllium cylinder. He convinced Walter Zinn to become his collaborator, and hired Semyon Krewer to investigate processes for manufacturing pure uranium and graphite.Szilard and Zinn conducted a simple experiment on the seventh floor of Pupin Hall at Columbia, using a radium–beryllium source to bombard uranium with neutrons. Initially nothing registered on the oscilloscope, but then Zinn realized that it was not plugged in. On doing so, they discovered significant neutron multiplication in natural uranium, proving that a chain reaction might be possible.Szilard later described the event: "We turned the switch and saw the flashes. We watched them for a little while and then we switched everything off and went home." He understood the implications and consequences of this discovery, though. "That night, there was very little doubt in my mind that the world was headed for grief".While they had demonstrated that the fission of uranium produced more neutrons than it consumed, this was still not a chain reaction. Szilard persuaded Fermi and Herbert L. Anderson to try a larger experiment using 500 pounds (230 kg) of uranium. To maximize the chance of fission, they needed a neutron moderator to slow the neutrons down. Hydrogen was a known moderator, so they used water. The results were disappointing. It became apparent that hydrogen slowed neutrons down, but also absorbed them, leaving fewer for the chain reaction. Szilard then suggested Fermi use carbon, in the form of graphite. He felt he would need about 50 tonnes (49 long tons; 55 short tons) of graphite and 5 tonnes (4.9 long tons; 5.5 short tons) of uranium. As a back-up plan, Szilard also considered where he might find a few tons of heavy water; deuterium would not absorb neutrons like ordinary hydrogen, but would have the similar value as a moderator. Such quantities of material would require a lot of money.Szilard drafted a confidential letter to the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, explaining the possibility of nuclear weapons, warning of the German nuclear weapon project, and encouraging the development of a program that could result in their creation. With the help of Wigner and Edward Teller, he approached his old friend and collaborator Einstein in August 1939, and convinced him to sign the letter, lending his fame to the proposal.The Einstein–Szilárd letter resulted in the establishment of research into nuclear fission by the U.S. government, and ultimately to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt gave the letter to his aide, Brigadier General Edwin M. "Pa" Watson with the instruction: "Pa, this requires action!"An Advisory Committee on Uranium was formed under Lyman J. Briggs, a scientist and the director of the National Bureau of Standards. Its first meeting on October 21, 1939, was attended by Szilard, Teller, and Wigner, who persuaded the Army and Navy to provide $6,000 for Szilard to purchase supplies for experiments—in particular, more graphite.A 1940 Army intelligence report on Fermi and Szilard, prepared when the United States had not yet entered World War II, expressed reservations about both. While it contained some errors of fact about Szilard, it correctly noted his dire prediction that Germany would win the war.Fermi and Szilard met with representatives of National Carbon Company, who manufactured graphite, and Szilard made another important discovery. He asked about impurities in graphite, and learned that it usually contained boron, a neutron absorber. He then had special boron-free graphite produced. Had he not done so, they might have concluded, as the German nuclear researchers did, that graphite was unsuitable for use as a neutron moderator. Like the German researchers, Fermi and Szilard still believed that enormous quantities of uranium would be required for an atomic bomb, and therefore concentrated on producing a controlled chain reaction. Fermi determined that a fissioning uranium atom produced 1.73 neutrons on average. It was enough, but a careful design was called for to minimize losses.Szilard worked up various designs for a nuclear reactor. "If the uranium project could have been run on ideas alone," Wigner later remarked, "no one but Leo Szilard would have been needed."Metallurgical LaboratoryThe Metallurgical Laboratory scientists, with Szilard third from right, in the lab coat.At its December 6, 1941 meeting, the National Defense Research Committee resolved to proceed with an all-out effort to produce atomic bombs. This decision was given urgency by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the following day that brought the United States into World War II. It was formally approved by Roosevelt in January 1942. Arthur H. Compton from the University of Chicago was appointed head of research and development. Against Szilard's wishes, Compton concentrated all the groups working on reactors and plutonium at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. Compton laid out an ambitious plan to achieve a chain reaction by January 1943, start manufacturing plutonium in nuclear reactors by January 1944, and produce an atomic bomb by January 1945.In January 1942, Szilard joined the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago as a research associate, and later the chief physicist. Alvin Weinberg noted that Szilard served as the project "gadfly", asking all the embarrassing questions.Szilard provided important insights. While uranium-238 did not fission readily with slow, moderated neutrons, it might still fission with the fast neutrons produced by fission. This effect was small but crucial. Szilard made suggestions that improved the uranium canning process, and worked with David Gurinsky and Ed Creutz on a method for recovering uranium from its salts.A vexing question at the time was how a production reactor should be cooled. Taking a conservative view that every possible neutron must be preserved, the majority opinion initially favored cooling with helium, which would absorb very few neutrons. Szilard argued that if this was a concern, then liquid bismuth would be a better choice. He supervised experiments with it, but the practical difficulties turned out to be too great. In the end, Wigner's plan to use ordinary water as a coolant won out.When the coolant issue became too heated, Compton and the director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., moved to dismiss Szilard, who was still a German citizen, but the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, refused to do so.Szilard was therefore present on December 2, 1942, when the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved in the first nuclear reactor under viewing stands of Stagg Field, and shook Fermi's hand.Szilard became a naturalized citizen of the United States in March 1943. The Army offered Szilard $25,000 for his inventions before November 1940, when he officially joined the project. He refused. He was the co-holder, with Fermi, of the patent on the nuclear reactor. In the end he sold his patent to the government for reimbursement of his expenses, some $15,416, plus the standard $1 fee. He continued to work with Fermi and Wigner on nuclear reactor design, and is credited with coining the term "breeder reactor".With an enduring passion for the preservation of human life and political freedom, Szilard hoped that the U.S. government would not use nuclear weapons, but that the mere threat of such weapons would force Germany and Japan to surrender. He also worried about the long-term implications of nuclear weapons, predicting that their use by the United States would start a nuclear arms race with the USSR. He drafted the Szilárd petition advocating that the atomic bomb be demonstrated to the enemy, and used only if the enemy did not then surrender. The Interim Committee instead chose to use atomic bombs against cities over the protests of Szilard and other scientists.Afterwards, he lobbied for amendments to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that placed nuclear energy under civilian control.Enrico Fermi and Szilard filed patents for the first nuclear reactor during the war, but due to classification of the core physics the issue of the patent was delayed for 11 years until classified aspects were declassified.