Hellos! Today’s set of fun facts will be all abut uranium. There are a lot out there, so we will undoubtedly miss some of them. With that said, here we go!
1 gram of Uranium 235 produces 20 billion calories when it undergoes complete fission. This is virtually impossible to do, though, because fission would require a critical mass of uranium, which 1 gram is not. It produces much more energy than the radioactive decay does, which is over 400 million calories, but cannot be used by any known organism as an energy source. To make a simple (and dangerous) fission reactor, all you need is some metal rods, something to remotely push them up and down, a bunch of magnets, a paddle thing, like the ones used on large boats, some wires, at least a critical mass of uranium (duh), water, and some materials to hold it in and make sure that the moving parts move. You make a medium sized container fr the water, shove in the uranium, and use the rods to make sure that the fission does not go too fast. you then have the steam produced by this travel through a pipe and push the paddle, which cranks a hand generator, then cools and helps push the paddle as it rushes down to the paddle before going back into the reaction pool. This method is incredibly inefficient. You would also need to use Uranium 235, and not 238. 235 is much rarer, making up 0.7% of uranium on Earth, while Uranium 238 makes up 99.3%.
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