"The burden of purifying water and breaking down hydrogen is getting heavier and heavier, and it takes me a day or two a week."

This is a complaint issued by Tianming after a day of decomposing hydrogen work.

"Nuclear energy has certain risks, but I really can't break down hydrogen so endlessly."

Nuclear energy must be developed!

……

There are two types of nuclear energy, one is fission nuclear energy and the other is fusion nuclear energy.

The fission type of nuclear energy is mainly composed of uranium, plutonium and their isotopes, these nuclear materials, not a stable substance, will decay over time, release neutrons, become two or more other substances, and release a large amount of energy.

In nature, all substances with relatively high atomic mass have the possibility of downward decay, and finally decay into more stable elements.

The decay rate of uranium and plutonium is relatively large, and it is more obvious.

When uranium and plutonium are of higher purity, a chain reaction occurs: the fission nucleus emits excess neutrons outward, and finally triggers the fission of the other nucleus, passing to infinity...... Then, a powerful atomic bomb exploded.

In the process of atomic bombing, a large amount of heat and harmful radiation will be released, and radioactive dust will also be produced.

The fusion type of nuclear energy, which is mainly composed of heavy hydrogen elements, deuterium, tritium, helium-3 elements, etc., are all nuclear materials that can be used as fusion reactions.

Fusion material does not decay, there is no radiation hazard, clean and hygienic. Moreover, after the fusion reaction of fusion material, the energy produced is much greater than that of fission reaction: the energy released after the fusion of 1 kilogram of fusion material is about 10 times that of 1 kilogram of fissile material.

In addition, the deuterium element has huge reserves in seawater. Almost to the point of inexhaustibility.

Every liter of seawater in the earth, containing 0.03g of deuterium, releases energy equal to the amount of heat released after the combustion of 300 liters of gasoline...... The energy density of water is much higher than that of gasoline.

Tianming doesn't know how much deuterium is in the seawater of Blue Mercury? But certainly not too little.

The fission reaction has been controlled by the earthlings, and one nuclear power plant after another has been built, and the electricity emitted. This is equivalent to approximately 15% of the total electricity generated.

The fusion reaction, at least in a high temperature environment of millions of degrees, can be triggered, and the reaction is extremely violent, not easy to control, it can occur in the form of a hydrogen bomb explosion instantaneously, but it cannot be like the fission reaction, by changing the number of nuclear fuel rods in the nuclear reactor, you can adjust the control.

It is necessary to achieve controlled nuclear fusion and create an "artificial sun". With the level of scientific and technological development of mankind, it will take at least 20 years.

The nuclear energy that Tianming wants to use at present is, of course, fission nuclear energy, which is a little more difficult to achieve.

However, according to the assumptions of several energy experts. It seems that Tianming has a way to make an artificial solar device, but the set of equipment to be made is too complicated and huge. Tianming didn't want to waste too much time on this.

The power generation device of fissile nuclear energy is simpler and can be completed in a few days.

But. Tianming also has some concerns.

That's nuclear radiation.

How can nuclear radiation be minimized and avoided?

Even, it is better to do it without nuclear radiation.

Safety first, Tianming didn't want to make a time bomb like Fukushima and end up killing himself.

"Boss, radioactive rays are produced by electronic energy level transitions in the process of producing new matter when nuclear materials decay, and they are almost unavoidable. Unless you make nuclear material that doesn't decay. Then, under certain conditions, the decay of this material can be triggered, so that at least this danger can be avoided in the process of transporting nuclear materials. Expert Ma Yuchen said.

"That's right, it's okay to make a new, safe nuclear material, I'll go back and figure out a way."

Back on the Little Blue Star, in his warm room, Tianming fumbled for seven days, and finally made a completely new nuclear material.

The process of "creating" the nuclear material can be described as tortuous.

First of all, Tianming discovered the decay principle of uranium: its nucleus is composed of a very large number of neutrons and protons, and the atomic weight is quite high, reaching 238, but it is very unstable, and there is a tendency to split into more than two nuclei at any time.

And this "gate" became the target of Tianming's key research, and after doing hundreds of realizations, comparing it with ordinary iron, helium, nitrogen, gold and other elements, he finally understood its principle.

The "gates" in the nuclei of all atoms are actually the structure of neutrons and neutrons.

Generally speaking, the protons in the nucleus are positively charged, and there is a reaction of repulsion with other protons that are also positively charged, which also leads to zhì, the more protons in the nucleus, the greater the repulsion force between each other, and the greater the possibility of fission.

Neutrons are uncharged, and they have a miraculous ability: they can gather multiple protons into the nucleus of an atom and maintain a steady state, which acts as a good "gate".

The greater the number of protons in the nucleus, the greater the "floodgate" role that neutrons need to play. As a result, the higher the atomic number, the greater the atomic weight, maintaining a law of increasing almost simultaneously.

After a moment's pause, he merged the nuclei of the four iron elements together to synthesize a completely new element, and then withdrew the static field space, and the new element immediately decayed and split into a variety of substances.

Then I tried to combine other atomic nuclei together, and the types and numbers were different, and some of the heavy nuclear elements synthesized had fission, and some were relatively stable, and there was no fission immediately.

Even if Tianming synthesized several elements whose nuclei were not very stable and not easy to undergo fission, as long as he produced a certain amount of these elements, they gathered together, and under the cumulative effect of low probability, they immediately showed greater radioactivity...... This cannot be seen as a clean nuclear fuel.

What Tianming needs is a kind of nuclear material that will not decay at all under normal conditions.

He tried another approach.

This method is called the neutron injection method.

He first purified the atoms of more than 300 elements from the seawater of Blue Mercury.

Atoms of each element. Take 100 million and start bombarding the nucleus.

In the static field space, 30 billion atoms, the nucleus of each atom, he bombarded a proton into it to see if it could remain stable.

Then, the neutrons will be bombarded again, and the number of bombardments will vary from one, two, or three, but at least more than one.

Such. All nuclei begin the process of adding one proton and then increasing by one, two, or three neutrons of varying numbers.

In this process, some nuclei collapse and crack into two or more stable elements.

There are also nuclei that persist and complete the process of continuous accumulation of atomic weight.

In the end, after continuous screening, Tianming picked out more than 60 very stable dìng. Elements with very large atomic weights come out...... Most of these are new elements that have never appeared before.

Then, Tianming added value to these more than 60 elements, each of which produced 100g. Measure its radioactivity.

As a result, there are 48 elements that are radioactive, and even, there is one element in the process of decay. Dozens of neutrons were released, triggering a terrifying chain reaction that exploded in the Dawn's ability space. Its explosive yield should be more than 300 tons of T-NT.

But fortunately, this didn't do any harm to Tianming, who was prepared, he just eliminated that element immediately.

There are more than 10 elements that are not radioactive, and Tianming is not sure if they are stable enough.

So, he did several more proton bombardments, and finally, he found the boundary values of more than 10 elements, and selected 4 of them as candidate materials.

Finally, in order to select the most suitable material to act as nuclear material, Tianming did a high-energy neutron bombardment - to see if the nuclear material would be fissioned under the bombardment of high-energy neutrons?

As a result, among the four elements, Tianming found the most suitable element to act as a nuclear material - Nuclear Energy One.

Nuclear Energy 1 has an atomic weight of 343, a number of 117 protons, and a number of 226 neutrons.

When the nucleus of Nuclear Energy No. 1 is bombarded by a high-energy neutron with a kinetic energy of 986 eV, the stable structure inside the nucleus immediately fission and disintegrates, and then five or six new substances with smaller atomic weights are generated, and eight free neutrons are released.

Of the 8 free neutrons, about 2-3 will carry more than 986 eV of kinetic energy, and the neutrons with this kinetic energy can also break the next nucleus, and the chain reaction occurs.

The brand-new nuclear material was "created zào" by Tianming, and he found the "gate", the stable "gate", so that this substance, under normal conditions, will not undergo any decay.

After the high-energy neutrons "hit" it, they disrupted the equilibrium of the nucleus, so that the chain reaction occurred, and it had fissionable properties.

"W-How is this possible? How could there be such a miraculous substance? ”

When Ma Yuchen heard Tianming describe the black "slab brick" in his hand, he was incredulous.

"Where does this substance come from? Is it mined from this planet? He asked again.

"You don't care where it came from, can you make a nuclear power generation ship with this kind of nuclear material?" Tianming threw the brick into the ability space and said to him impatiently.

"Yes, of course! It will be built very quickly. Ma Yuchen said excitedly.

In the next few days, Tianming devoted himself to the design and manufacture of nuclear power generation ships.

The working principle of nuclear power generation is not much different from that of thermal power generation, except that one burns nuclear fuel and the other uses fossil fuel.

The nuclear reactor built by Tianming has a designed installed capacity of 500 megawatts and a maximum capacity of 1,000 megawatts. The outer shell is made of hard silver steel material, and there are several layers of radiation-proof materials, thermal insulation materials, high-temperature resistant materials, and neutron reflective materials inside...... Layer after layer, the thickness of the entire nuclear reactor shell, more than a meter, barely shows a single bit of radiation.

In addition to two steam turbine generator sets, power storage equipment, and transformer equipment, the entire nuclear power generation ship is all power equipment.

The displacement of the nuclear power generation ship is 28,000 tons, and after it is built, only one ship can solve the energy problem of the entire fleet.

…… (To be continued......)