The establishment of the nuclear bomb drop down in Japan

Located in the middle of the Hanford facility, the dissolved nuclear material production complex on the Columbia River near Richland, Washington, is the first B -reactor, the first large -scale nuclear reactor built in the world. For more than 40 years, reactor B with 8 other ovens, producing enough plutonium to create more than 60,000 nuclear weapons, including most of the massive US nuclear arsenal. The reactor B is among the number of systems born in the Secret Manhattan project that still exists and allows the public to access, according to Amusing Planet.

Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 are two fission materials used widely in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. But they are not easy to collect. Uranium-235 is very scarce, so to make weapons, uranium is available in nature need to be enriched with a series of difficult and expensive processes.

In contrast, Plutonium-239 does not even exist in nature. The half-life of Plutonium-239 is 24,000 years, so if this isotope has existed when the Earth forms, it has decreased for a long time against other elements. But plutonium-239 can be produced. If neutrons enter uranium-238, some uranium nuclei will absorb neutrons and become uranium-239. But this nucleus contains too many neutrons to stabilize and quickly decay into neptunium (the next element in the periodic table). Neptunium continues to decay after two hours of Plutonium-239.

Plutonium-239 has an advantage compared to uranium. It has the smallest critical weight among all fertilizers, only 11 kg compared to 56 kg of uranium-235. This allows engineers to manufacture compact nuclear weapons, which can fit at the missile. Therefore, Plutonium is the fuel option in many reactors and nuclear weapons.

The plan of the US authorities is to build 3 nuclear reactors at Hanford campus, each about 9.7 km apart on the southern bank of the Columbia River, called the reactor B, D and F. The location is selected Choose far away but not empty, there are many agricultural towns and small residential areas along the river evacuated.

Reactor B started in September 1944, followed by reactor D in December of the same year and F reactor F in February 1945. Their designs are identical to the core of the 11 x 8.5 m Graphite box with more than two thousand aluminum tubes piercing through, containing nuclear fuel is uranium and vertical control bar. The box is surrounded by cast iron and concrete shields. The pumped water from the Columbia River is used to cool the reactor while the rinse is poured back to the river after the radioactive activity in the sedimentation tank is over.

The B reactor has an initial thermal power of 250 megawatts, designed to produce enough plutonium for a nuclear arsenal, the D and F oven also provides additional production capacity. Three months later, the amount of plutonium was processed and transferred to Los Alamos, used in the Trinity test. For months, the reactor B, D, and F produce plutonium used in the “Fat Man” bomb drop down Nagasaki. During this period, only one group of employees in Hanford knew they were working in a nuclear weapons project. Droping bombs on the city of Japan became a shock for employees at Hanford.

After World War II, 6 more reactors were built in Hanford to produce materials for the US nuclear weapons program. These reactors operate for more than 40 years, producing 63 tons of plutonium during operation, accounting for most fission materials that 60,000 weapons in the US warehouse use.

Reactor B has been operating for more than 20 years, finally stopping running in 1968. The last reactor closed in 1987. After closing the Hanford facility, the US government spent more than $ 113 billion to clean the radioactive waste waste. . It is expected that the process will continue to 2046, costing about 2 billion USD per year until completed.