Roland randomly picked a lead box, opened the lid, and took out the silver-white metal block inside, feeling its heavy weight—before being stimulated, it was no different from a piece of pure iron, as long as you didn't lick it a couple of times, it could be considered basically harmless. If one didn't have a deep understanding of it, it would be difficult to imagine how amazing the power contained in its small body was just by looking at its appearance.
It was by virtue of it that mankind touched the threshold of mass-energy conversion for the first time.
Compared to all previous chemical huoyào, this step could be described as taking a new step.
Roland roughly counted the number of lead boxes, about fifty or so. Disregarding the weight of the container itself, each box was calculated to store one kilogram of material, which was a full fifty kilograms of uranium-235, with a purity close to one hundred percent.
And there was more than one such lead cabinet in the room.
If they were all poured together...
The research institute would probably be really "high energy," right?
"How can these things be used to become the 'Radiance of the Sun' you mentioned before?" Nightingale asked curiously, "Made into a special machine, or ignited? It doesn't seem like they can burn."
"Want to know?" Roland couldn't help but smile. "You're thinking too simply. Just stack the metal blocks in the box together, and they will automatically emit light and heat. The uranium in just this one cabinet is enough to raze Neverwinter to the ground, so Lucia's responsibility is so important. If she accidentally shakes her hand—"
The scene suddenly fell into a dead silence.
Lucia covered her mouth, her eyes showing a look of horror.
"...No way," Achima said in disbelief after a long while, "Do you mean that, by accident, we could destroy the entire city?"
Nightingale flashed and snatched the lead box from Roland's hand, putting it back in the cabinet. Then, she grabbed his hand and dragged him out.
"Hey... Wait, what are you doing?"
"Do you even need to ask!" Nightingale said anxiously, "Of course, I'm taking you out of the city and then having these things transported away! Lucia, go notify Wendy and tell her to contact the Administrative Office!"
"I... I'll go find Tilly too," Achima gritted her teeth. "Only she can mobilize the Sleeping Spell."
"Stop—I'm kidding—"
The room was in chaos. Roland spent a lot of effort to calm everyone down.
"Are you sure you were just kidding?" Nightingale said unhappily.
"Cough, of course... I was only talking about the principle," he quickly added, "But it's not that easy to achieve stimulation in reality. Even if I try my best, I can't guarantee success."
Lucia breathed a sigh of relief. "Your Majesty... You scared me half to death."
"That's not very funny," Nightingale glared at him. "If Wendy and Scroll heard this, regardless of whether it was a joke—"
"They would probably ask to move the new research institute away from Neverwinter, right?" Roland said helplessly.
"It's good that you know, or we could move you to a safe place."
"Okay, let's pretend I didn't say those things earlier..." He cleared his throat. "As long as you don't tell them, Wendy and Scroll won't know."
"Maybe a certain bird has already heard it." Nightingale glanced out the window.
"Intercept the message, a bottle of Chaos Drink." Roland said without hesitation.
"Deal." She blinked and disappeared in front of the three of them.
Looking at the dumbfounded Lucia and Achima, Roland shrugged. "Uh... Don't mind it, it's also part of the joke."
After a moment, Nightingale returned to the room. "No suspicious targets were found, but the reward—"
"Is still valid."
Her expression finally softened, and she hummed a little tune as she went to the side to chew on dried fish.
"That... Your Majesty," Achima hesitated for a moment before saying with a solemn expression, "What you said before wasn't entirely a joke, right? Because when formulating the rules, you repeatedly emphasized that attention should be paid to the weight, and in order to confuse or miscalculate, you even precisely controlled each lead box to four kilograms, weighing it together with the container. This can maximize the guarantee that the metal blocks inside the box are equal." She paused. "Also, you said that if an accident occurs at the research institute, or there are signs of someone breaking in, the first thing to do is to notify the guards to seal off the scene, and then immediately report back to the castle, instead of entering the courtyard to check the situation. This proves... They do have some danger, right?"
Roland looked at her with some surprise. "Good observation skills. What you said is basically correct—in addition to toxicity, weight is also one of the key factors. The purpose of placing them separately is precisely for this reason." To be able to judge the nature of the extracts from the rules and regulations, it can be regarded as careful and meticulous. Is it this meticulousness that allowed her to awaken the ability to trace the origin..."But weight alone can only endanger the research institute. If you want it to become a weapon against demons, you need something else."
"Those individually placed particles?" Achima quickly reacted.
"Not entirely, but you guessed half of it."
The composition of natural uranium ore is very complex. In addition to uranium compounds, it is also usually accompanied by many radioactive substances. Most of them are secondary products after decay. Some have completely lost their radioactivity and become stable bodies, while others are still on the long road of decay. Although the Radioactive Clan carried out preliminary refining of the ore when building the Cursed Temple, the basic composition is still roughly the same—this can be seen from Lucia's refining results.
The most abundant is uranium-238, which cannot be made into weapons, but can be recognized by the Festival Magic Cube, and its effectiveness is almost the same as uranium-235, so it is all sent to the backyard of North Slope Mountain.
The second most abundant is uranium-235, which can be regarded as weapons-grade when the purity reaches jiug, but the content in nature is extremely low, accounting for only 1% of natural uranium elements. Therefore, the first difficulty encountered in taking the "Radiant Radiation" route is refining, which is also a hurdle that most people cannot overcome.
But it is not the rarest—subsequent decay products such as thorium, radium, radon, and polonium are theoretically even rarer, and what Roland needs is naturally occurring polonium-210, which is also the most common isotope in the polonium family.
As a flower of the motherland cultivated by nine-year compulsory education, Roland is very familiar with the two elements of radium and polonium. Madame Curie, who was repeatedly mentioned in textbooks, became famous in history because she discovered them. Although the half-life of polonium-210 is only a hundred days, and its content is so low that it is maddening, Madame Curie's multiple extractions have ended in failure. However, she still pointed out its existence from the strong radioactivity shown by the ore dissolving solution.
Whether it is radium or polonium, they can be used to make neutron sources—which is also related to the second difficulty of Radiant Radiation: detonation.
The principle of the first-generation nuclear weapons is very simple, so simple that it can be summarized in one sentence: nuclear fission releases energy. Specifically for uranium, it is that uranium-235, after accepting a neutron, will be stimulated into unstable uranium-236, and then fenliè into two lighter nuclides and more ziyou neutrons. The mass difference between them is converted into energy.
Obviously, the released neutrons will hit other nuclides again. This cycle continues, which is a chain reaction, and the huge energy that bursts out at the same time is no different from bàozhà.
However, in the microscopic world, the gap between atomic nuclei is like a chasm—as the textbook says, if you regard an atom as a football field, then the atomic nucleus is just an ant on the surface. If you are unlucky, the neutron will soon fly out of the boundary, and the reaction will also stop. If you want to ensure that every ant is hit, you obviously have to stack enough fields on its wàiwei to ensure that no matter which direction the neutron flies, there will be an ant lying in its path.
Reflected in the macroscopic world, what is obvious is "mass" and "shape".
In fact, the critical mass is not a fixed value. Obviously, the probability of a field arranged in a straight line being hit is not as good as that of a stacked field. The specific results need to be calculated in large quantities according to its shape. Roland has also heard an anecdote about the failure of a war due to someone miscalculating the data. Of course, as a latecomer standing on the shoulders of giants, he naturally does not need to start from scratch. Numerous experiments have proved that when the object is spherical, the critical mass is the smallest, and uranium-235 is fifty-two kilograms.
He has been cautious enough to limit the uranium element storage of each lead box to one kilogram.
But as the saying goes, the critical mass is not fixed. If the area of the field can be greatly reduced, or if enough extra neutrons are provided for the nuclide, then its critical value will be greatly reduced. The former is the principle of the implosion bomb—zhàyào is arranged on the wàiwei of the warhead. During bàozhà, the reactants are instantly squeezed together, making its density increase sharply, thereby exceeding the critical mass. For Neverwinter's existing technology, whether it is calculating the critical mass of irregular single bodies or precisely controlling zhàyào's centripetal detonation, there are too many difficulties. Therefore, Roland set his sights on the latter—
Use a neutron source to ensure the continuous fission reaction.