Uranium is found in the lake in the form of uranium oxide, commonly known as yellowcake. The yellow cake does not dissolve in water, it is dispersed into fine particles that are mixed with the water and the silt at the bottom of the lake.

Chen Yue built a huge sedimentation tank and a filtration tank, and through a series of means, he finally got piles of yellow particulate matter.

This is the yellowcake.

But getting the yellowcake is only the first step in building a nuclear power plant.

Uranium oxide cannot be fissioned directly, it first needs to react with nitric acid to produce uranium tetrafluoride. Uranium tetrafluoride reacts with fluorine again to produce uranium hexafluoride.

When the temperature is raised, uranium hexafluoride is turned into a gas.

At this point, the tens of thousands of rotors that had been built in advance came into play.

At the moment, although the gas here is uranium hexafluoride gas, there is also a slight difference between them. The difference is that some uranium hexafluoride gas contains uranium-235 and some uranium-238.

Uranium-235 and uranium-238 are both isotopes of uranium, and their properties are relatively close, but they are very different from each other for the nuclear industry.

Uranium-235 can be used for nuclear fission, but because of its relatively stable structure, the nuclear fission rate is extremely slow, and it has no use value at all.

Therefore, if you want to build a nuclear power plant, you must distinguish between the two types of uranium.

These bowls are the devices used to distinguish between uranium-235 and uranium-238.

Due to their different molecular weights, the two uranium hexafluoride have a very slight difference in mass. They are poured into a high-speed centrifuge bowl, and with the enormous centrifugal force generated by the rotation of the centrifuge, the heavier uranium-238 can be pressed to the bottom of the cylinder wall, and the lighter uranium-235 is placed on the upper layer.

This part of the gas is then separated, and its concentration is successfully increased.

This method is very inefficient, and one separation can only increase its concentration by about a few tenths of a percent, or even a few tenths of a percent, so it needs to be separated multiple times.

These tens of thousands of bowls need to be connected in series with each other. The gas enriched with uranium hexafluoride enriched in a centrifuge will be sent to the next centrifuge to be enriched again, and then continue to be sent to the next one, and so on, after thousands of enrichments, finally enough uranium hexafluoride 235 gas can be produced, and then it will be reduced, and nuclear fuel can be industrially used.

A uranium enrichment plant on Earth usually has one or two thousand centrifuges, but here on Europa, Chen Yue has made tens of thousands.

Or is it because Chen Yue's material technology is a little lower now, and he can't make a centrifuge rotor that can withstand high enough speed, so he can only exchange quantity for quality, and use tens of thousands of centrifuges to achieve the effect of thousands of centrifuges in the earth era.

But even so, the uranium element that Chen Yue finally enriched and refined was only 4% to 6%.

At this concentration, the construction of nuclear bombs is a little worse, but it is still okay as fuel for nuclear power plants.

So, on the edge of Chen's planned industrial zone, a nuclear power plant has risen next to a lake of liquid water.

Nuclear power plants require large amounts of water to dissipate heat. This is where the lakes come into play.

The uranium extracted from great difficulty is fed into the reactor. Immediately after the removal of a portion of the neutron reduction rods, the chain reaction of nuclear fission begins, and a huge amount of heat begins to be generated, which is converted into electricity through a series of devices.

The first nuclear power plant put into operation has an installed capacity of 300,000 kilowatt hours, which means that it can generate 7.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in one day, or 2.628 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year!

To generate so much electricity and use chemical fuels, Chen Yue needs 300,000 tons of hydrogen and 2.4 million tons of oxygen. If you switch to methane with a lower calorific value, you need more.

But at the moment, using nuclear fission to generate electricity, Chen Yue only needs 4 tons of fission fuel with a uranium content of only about 5%, which can support the consumption of this nuclear power plant for a year.

The difference between the two is simply an order of magnitude, and efficiency is simply not the same.

After the construction of this nuclear power plant, Chen Yue realized more deeply that his dream could not be realized by relying on chemical energy alone.

Nuclear energy is the only viable option.

After having the first nuclear power plant, Chen Yue immediately began to plan the second, the third, and finally built a total of six, with a total installed capacity of 3 million kilowatt hours, which can generate 26 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, greatly reducing the burden of fuel transportation on the transportation system.

After that, Chen Yue extended his tentacles to a broader world.

He plans to explore Europa's deep ocean and dig deeper into Europa's resource potential.

To detect the deep sea, of course, a submarine is needed. At the same time, in order to solve the problem of underwater communication, the submarine must also be wired.

Building submarines is a completely new field for Chen Yue. However, the basic principles are almost the same, and all that is needed is to study and improve step by step. Fortunately, Chen Yue now has a huge computing power and has enough resources to conduct relevant research.

In addition, Chen Yue believes that his research and development of submarines can be regarded as a pre-research for the future exploration of Jupiter and the acquisition of resources from Jupiter.

Jupiter is a massive gas planet that stores the entire solar system, the richest resource outside of the Sun. But these resources are hidden beneath a thick gas.

When the pressure reaches a certain point, deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, the gas will exhibit similar properties to liquids. To get there, you also need a submarine-like device.

"Let's practice here here on Europa first."

Chen Yue thought so.

So a fully enclosed submarine with a total length of about six meters that maintained communication with Chen Yue through a special cable, and installed various detectors inside, was launched at a certain outlet above Europa's thick ice.

The ice on Europa is not monolithic. Because of Jupiter's gravitational pull, and the release of geothermal heat inside Europa, there will also be some gaps that go straight under the ice. Here's one.

"At the beginning of the Earth era, people debated the question of whether there was life under Europa's ice for I don't know how many years, and I don't know how many exploration attempts were made, but until the destruction of the earth, no final answer was reached. Now, let me answer the question. ”

Chen Yue thought silently, maneuvering the submarine and continuing to dive.

Europa's gravity is smaller than Earth's, and the water pressure at the same depth is correspondingly smaller. This is undoubtedly a favorable factor.

As soon as I entered the water to a depth of about 5 meters, the surrounding space became completely dark, and there was no light at all.