Garden of Eden, Main Laboratory.

Richard walked in and sat down at the circular lab table, glancing at a simple calendar on the table.

The so-called simple calendar is a scroll that is divided into 12 large cells from top to bottom, representing the 12 months of the year. There are about 30 cells in each month, and there are different numbers such as one, two, three, four, five, etc., which represent the specific day of each month.

At this time, more than half of the small squares on the scroll have been circled with quills, which means that the date has passed.

Normally, this is what he paints after resting, and occasionally Pandora will draw a few strokes with great interest, and the old man of the lich has tried it, but after drawing it once, he says that he is bored and gives up.

The difference between the circles can be clearly seen on the scroll: most of the circles are very standard and he draws them, and a few circles are extremely standard, such as drawing with a compass and this is drawn by Pandora, since Pandora studied mathematics deeply, he has shown an amazing talent for image painting, and the manual drawing can almost reach the accuracy of tool drawing. Also, there is a lone circle that is flattened, which is the handiwork of the old man of the lich.

At this point, he saw that the latest circle had been drawn to the end of the eighth square. But the circle, unlike all the previous circles, can't even be called a circle, because it's square.

Square?

Richard looked at it, couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, and the thought flashed: this square pattern was definitely not drawn by him, and Pandora was not possible, because the twists and turns are not standard at all. In this case, there is only one possibility for the old man Ah Fu, it seems that the other party has been a little idle lately.

A little idle.

The thought flashed through him, and Richard didn't think much of it when he was sure it was the old man of the lich, but just memorized the date in his heart.

September 1st.

"Today is the first of September, the first day of the cool moon, the beginning of autumn. After the date was determined, Richard said silently in his heart, with some emotion.

If memory serves, the beginning of the nuclear weapons research and manufacturing program was also in the autumn of last year.

Last autumn's October Frost Moon, to be exact.

At that time, Joseph of the Teresa branch of the Truth Society met with him and gave him the crystal ball that the Truth Society used to communicate. It was during the meeting that he felt the corrosive energy on the other party's body, and later confirmed that it was the residue of nuclear radiation, and gradually found the uranium mine outside the small town of Shambhala, where the source of nuclear radiation was located.

Then the acquisition of mines, the construction of equipment, large-scale mining, refining and purification, step by step to the present.

This long process took almost 11 months, almost a year.

And this almost a year's cost is completely worth it for now, because he has obtained a sufficient amount of weapons-grade nuclear material uranium-235, completing the most critical step in the nuclear weapons research and manufacturing plan.

This is not an exaggeration, the acquisition of raw materials, which is extremely important and the most difficult in the creation of nuclear weapons. Once this step is completed, the next manufacturing process is extremely easy.

So far, his plan can actually be declared successful in advance, because on the premise of having enough nuclear materials, nuclear materials can be piled together to produce a nuclear explosion, which is the principle of the first generation of nuclear weapons.

The principle of the first generation of nuclear weapons is extremely simple, and it only needs to be clarified three terms: continuous nuclear chain reaction, critical mass, and mass-energy equation.

Generally speaking, in the real world, heavy elements such as uranium and plutonium will spontaneously fission due to radioactive decay, and they will also cause nuclear reactions due to foreign neutrons, which are called "fissile substances".

These "fissionable materials" will release a part of their own structure of free neutrons during spontaneous fission. A free neutron has a half-life of about 15 minutes, which means that after 15 minutes, it decays into protons and β particles.

However, in some special cases, free neutrons can hit other atoms before their half-life is reached, triggering nuclear fission of the remaining atoms, and then releasing more free neutrons. If these more free neutrons can hit the atom again, they will further produce nuclear fission.

When there are enough nuclear materials in a confined space, once nuclear fission occurs, it will continue to continue, forming a continuous nuclear chain reaction.

The amount of nuclear material that can sustain nuclear fission is called critical mass.

Critical mass is crucial, and once a nuclear material reaches a critical mass, a nuclear explosion can occur if one of the atoms in the material is fissioned to release neutrons, or a neutron is given by an external neutron source.

In a nuclear explosion, a large number of atoms are ruptured, the mass is damaged, and the damaged mass is converted into earth-shattering energy and released. C2, just the loss of one kilogram of matter, can release, (more than 800 million) joules of energy, equivalent to the detonation of 20 million tons of TNT explosives.

In a word, the principle of the first generation of nuclear weapons, the atomic bomb, was to bring nuclear materials to a critical state, produce a continuous nuclear chain reaction, and based on the mass-energy equation, the loss of mass was converted into terrifying energy and released, producing a devastating effect.

It is precisely for this reason that he said that the nuclear weapons research and manufacturing program can already be declared successful in advance. As long as he wants, he can create a nuclear explosion by piling up nuclear materials at any time.

However, he was reluctant to do so.

The principle of the first generation of nuclear weapons is very simple, but it is still slightly difficult to actually make it.

The key is not to just pile up nuclear materials and cause a nuclear explosion. Because the utilization rate of nuclear materials is extremely low, the final result may be that only one percent or even less than one thousandth of all nuclear materials atoms will successfully fission and release destructive energy, and the rest of the nuclear materials will be blown away and scattered into the air as radiation fallout.

To put it simply, it is convenient to trigger a nuclear explosion in the most direct and crude way, but it is a great waste of nuclear materials.

Waste is shameful, waste makes him feel distressed.

It took him almost a year to get a sufficient amount of nuclear materials, and he wanted to make the best use of them, trying to squeeze out all the value of these nuclear materials, and he was definitely not satisfied with just listening to a sound.

So, in order to achieve his goal, he has to do something next. Specifically, it is to let the nuclear materials in hand reach the critical mass in a better way through special nuclear devices, and generate nuclear explosions and release energy with higher utilization rates.

And to do that, you need to make use of some knowledge that is not common.

After all, not everyone knows how the real atomic bomb is made, and even if they do, they don't think about it every day.

"I'm going to go to that place again. Richard thought and whispered to himself.

......