An easy one about atomic bombs.

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, specifically addressing the fate of unreacted uranium and its potential hazards. Participants explore various aspects of nuclear weapons, their applications, and public interest in them, while also touching on the implications of uranium's toxicity and radiation.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant questions what happened to the unreacted uranium from the Little Boy bomb and whether it poses a problem today.
  • Another participant estimates that the radiation stress from the unreacted uranium spread over a large area is negligible, suggesting that it is relatively safe.
  • Some participants express skepticism about the practical applications of nuclear weapons, viewing them as largely useless except for specific exotic ideas.
  • There is a mention of the potential use of nuclear technology for fusion reactors, though one participant questions the logic of using nuclear explosions to initiate fusion.
  • Concerns are raised about the health risks of unreacted uranium, particularly regarding its chemical toxicity rather than its radioactivity.
  • One participant suggests that the fission products from a nuclear explosion may pose a greater hazard than unreacted uranium.
  • Another participant notes that while uranium is a heavy metal that could precipitate out of the air, inhalation of uranium dust could still be harmful.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views on the implications of unreacted uranium and the interest in nuclear weapons, with no clear consensus reached on the overall utility or danger of nuclear technology.

Contextual Notes

Some participants highlight the distinction between the chemical toxicity of uranium and its radiological effects, indicating that the health risks may depend on specific exposure scenarios. There is also uncertainty regarding the public's fascination with nuclear technology and its moral implications.

BillH
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The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was very inefficient in terms of the amount of uranium fissioned. My questions are: What happened to the unreacted uranium and does it still pose a problem? I'm sure for most of you on this site this is an extremely easy question, but I am new to this and would really appreciate any help.
 
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Considering that it was seemingly relatively safe to stand right next to (or at least be in the same plane as) the bomb where the uranium was concentrated, I would assume that less than 60 kg of uranium spread over an area of say 10 km² (value guesstimated from the wikipedia article on the hiroshima bombing) causes a negligible radiation stress.
Personal sidenote: I always have to wonder why people are interested in nukes. Apart from some exotic ideas about accelerating spaceships, they are pretty useless devices - at least for morally-acceptable applications.
 
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Another exotic idea is to save us from astreoids :)
 
Timo said:
Personal sidenote: I always have to wonder why people are interested in nukes. Apart from some exotic ideas about accelerating spaceships, they are pretty useless devices - at least for morally-acceptable applications.
Well, they are the most powerful form of energy we have yet been able to harness. Why would we NOT exploit it?
 
Timo said:
I always have to wonder why people are interested in nukes. Apart from some exotic ideas about accelerating spaceships, they are pretty useless devices - at least for morally-acceptable applications.

Hmm, Fusion Reactor... Atomic Bomb...

The former is a fantastic display of the (to most people) mythical power of the universe, it has tendrils into the moral ideas of compromise and egotistical power. These emotions and concepts are interesting at the least. The Fusion reactor? Well to most people it’s just a new toy that they never see directly.

(I work in the oil field, so "most people" is in reference to this group of people that I have been exposed to.)
 
I don't really see how nukes are used in fusion reactors. It seems a bit counter-productive trying to start the fusion process by blowing up the facility and everything in a 1 km radius around it. I've not said that nuclear physics is a useless field, but explicitely meant the weapons which in contrast to e.g. dynamite have no useful purpose (except for movies :biggrin:). Discussion about that is not the topic of the thread, anyways; being the only one responding to the OP, I just took the liberty to comment on the (in my eyes somewhat ill) wide public interest in nukes (which does not necessarily apply to BillH, the question was certainly not in the "how does one build nukes"-line and hadn't gotten any reply by me if it had been).

EDIT: Did you (lilrex) possibly mean "the latter" instead of "the former"? Your post seems to make more sense with "the latter".
 
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Timo, the Fusion reference was intended to compare something useful in Nuclear physics with the fascination of nukes, I am sorry if my comparison was not clear I just found your comments on the matter interesting.

BillH, the unreacted uranium would still pose a problem if the dust were to get in your lungs, it is unforgiving in that respect but the uranium itself is heavy and would likely be precipitated out of the air born environment. I am still looking for a reference for that though, so don’t quote me on that.
 
Off hand I suspect that, in the fallout from a nuclear bomb, the fission products would pose a much more serious hazard than the unexploded uranium.
 
BillH said:
The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was very inefficient in terms of the amount of uranium fissioned. My questions are: What happened to the unreacted uranium and does it still pose a problem? I'm sure for most of you on this site this is an extremely easy question, but I am new to this and would really appreciate any help.

The primary health hazard posed by uranium is one of chemical toxicity (think "lead poisoning"), not radioactivity. As far as isotopes go, the uranium series is an extremely benign alpha-emitter -- won't even make it through the top layer of your skin. Ingestion is the health-risk posed by alpha-emitters (raises the relative biological effectiveness by an order of magnitude), but that being said, with uranium you'd be dead from heavy-metal toxicity long before the radiation would do anything.
 

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