Reborn Before the Apocalypse: My Backing is the Nation

Chapter 203 This means nothing!

Professor Yu Qing watched quietly as the yellow cake, or ammonium diuranate, was oxidized by high-temperature heating in the operating room and transformed into a peculiar black powder.

This is uranium dioxide.

Barrel after barrel of uranium dioxide was carried away by robots, while from another floor of the oxidation workshop, numerous, continuously flowing yellow solid yellowcakes were brought in.

He knew that upstream of this uranium enrichment plant, uranium ore bases were also operating at full capacity.

The yellowcake needed for this uranium enrichment plant alone requires upstream uranium ore plants to process approximately 40,000 tons of uranium ore per day.

These ores are crushed and ground into powder, and then undergo further processing steps before they can be made into yellowcake, which serves as the raw material for this factory.

Forty thousand tons of uranium ore means that the uranium smelting base would need an area of ​​at least one square kilometer, consume more than ten million kilowatt-hours of electricity every day, and employ more than a thousand workers and engineers—and that is after the large-scale adoption of automated equipment.

At present, with all uranium mines striving to increase yellowcake production, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people will be involved in this process.

But as I said before, this is nothing in the grand scheme of the entire black hole interception plan; it's insignificant.

Following the conveyor belt and the engineers' operations, Yu Qing's gaze shifted to the next step.

"This is the fluorination workshop."

He saw rows of enormous reaction vessels. In these vessels, black uranium dioxide powder was added to one side, while hydrogen fluoride was added to the other, ultimately producing a green substance commonly known as green salt.

This is uranium tetrafluoride.

Uranium tetrafluoride was sent back to the fluorination workshop and converted into uranium hexafluoride, which looked like coarse salt.

Next comes the most important and largest-scale step: uranium enrichment.

This step was located in another part of the factory area. Led by a staff member, Yu Qing walked there.

The closer you get, the more noticeable the deep, high-frequency buzzing sound becomes.

Upon arriving at the control room, Yu Qing witnessed an astonishing scene through the enormous transparent glass.

He saw a steel jungle.

It was a huge factory with an area of ​​100,000 square meters. Apart from some equipment on the periphery, the center of the factory was filled with cylindrical objects that gleamed with a cold metallic sheen.

The cylinders are 3 meters high and only about 30 centimeters in diameter. They are neatly arranged in this huge factory building, with each row spaced only 1.5 meters apart, and there are nearly 200 in each row.

The distance between each column is a little more, about 2 meters, with a narrow passage in the middle.

Some robots, robot dogs, and engineers wearing heavy radiation protection suits were patrolling and inspecting the passageway.

Yu Qing knew that this was a centrifuge.

All the previous complex processing steps were for one purpose: to turn uranium-containing compounds into gas.

Because only gases can be separated and purified more easily.

Uranium hexafluoride is a solid at room temperature, but it becomes a colorless and odorless transparent gas at 56 degrees Celsius.

It is highly poisonous. Inhaling even a small amount is enough to take a life.

At that moment, these highly toxic, transparent gases were injected into the first centrifuge.

In fact, even the raw material for this uranium enrichment plant, yellowcake, has a uranium content of over 80%.

However, it is clearly unsuitable as a raw material for nuclear weapons. The reason is simple: uranium exists in different isotopes depending on the number of neutrons it contains.

The most common is uranium-238. It is non-fissile, while uranium-235 can be used as nuclear fuel.

The uranium hexafluoride gas at this moment is more accurately a mixture of uranium hexafluoride-238 and uranium hexafluoride-235.

The vast majority of them are uranium hexafluoride-238.

However, these two gases have extremely similar chemical properties. How can they be separated?
Throughout the long course of technological progress, the nuclear industry of human civilization has gradually formed a set of methods that, while simple and crude and not very efficient, are sufficient to meet the needs.

Centrifuge array.

The approximately 8 metallic cylinders in the factory building in front of us are 8 high-speed centrifuges.

Their rotation speed can reach over 6 revolutions per minute. During such high-speed rotation, uranium hexafluoride-238, which has a higher molecular weight and is slightly heavier, is squeezed to the outer layer of the centrifuge, while uranium hexafluoride-235, which is slightly lighter, is located in the inner part of the centrifuge.

Using this seemingly simple and crude method with no technical requirements, the two gases were initially separated.

But one separation is clearly not enough.

A centrifuge can only increase the concentration of uranium hexafluoride-235 by 0.5% at best.

But it doesn't matter.

The slightly purified uranium hexafluoride-235 gas will be sent to the next centrifuge for further purification, and then to the next, and the next...

After being purified by multiple centrifuges, its concentration will gradually increase to over 90%, becoming weapon-grade uranium-235.

At that moment, 80,000 high-speed centrifuges were spinning simultaneously at high speed. Yu Qing knew that this was just one of the centrifuge array buildings in the factory. Next to it, there were nine other buildings of the same specifications.

At the same time, a total of 80 high-speed centrifuges were rotating simultaneously.

Correspondingly, this factory consumes an enormous amount of electricity.

Every hour, 2000 million kilowatt-hours of electricity are consumed by this factory.

Looking at the centrifuge array that resembled a steel jungle, Yu Qing's mind naturally recalled the information brought back by the Cyclist named Jiang Yang.

"A single ion drilling rig capable of penetrating the Earth's crust has a peak power of approximately 1 GW, which translates to a power consumption of 100 million kilowatt-hours per hour. This factory consumes the equivalent of 20 ion drilling rigs operating simultaneously..."

He also knew that at that moment, all uranium enrichment plants around the world were simultaneously operating at maximum capacity.

There are more than 10 factories that are equivalent to or larger than this one at the moment.

After inspecting the uranium enrichment plant and gaining a clear understanding of its operations, Professor Yu Qing then visited a nuclear power plant.

At this moment, due to the extremely urgent need for nuclear fission fuel production, this nuclear power plant has almost stopped generating electricity and has transformed from a nuclear fuel consumer to a nuclear fuel producer.

To compensate for the loss of power from all nuclear power plants, the human world has gone so far as to restart coal-fired power plants that had been decommissioned and to install a series of supporting facilities.

Hydropower stations, which were originally used mostly for flood control, have started generating electricity again, and energy storage power stations have also started operating at full power.

All these measures are for one purpose: to stabilize the power grid.

Yes, it's just about stabilizing the power grid, not filling the power shortage.

Because, in absolute terms, with the widespread use of wind and solar power, the human world is not short of electricity at this moment.

However, wind and solar power are too unstable, so other types of power, such as thermal power, hydropower, and energy storage power stations, are needed to smooth out peak flows and fill valleys, so that the power grid can be stable.

Nuclear power plants have historically served this purpose: generating less or no electricity during peak power generation periods and generating more electricity during off-peak periods, thereby ensuring grid stability.

Now, this responsibility has been transferred to other types of power plants.

This inevitably involves the mobilization of millions of people, but as I said before, it's nothing.

At this moment, some peculiar changes, akin to "turning stone into gold," are taking place within this nuclear power plant.

As is well known, chemical reactions can only change the chemical structure of an object, but cannot change the type of elements.

It can turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, but it cannot turn iron into gold.

This is why humanity has dreamed of turning lead into gold for thousands of years, yet has never succeeded.

At this very moment, within this nuclear power plant, the most fundamental change in the elemental composition is taking place.

This is an element factory.

Uranium-238, the waste material separated from uranium enrichment plants or nuclear waste, is now being processed into rods and begins to be irradiated with neutrons.

Through fast neutron capture, these uranium elements were converted into another element, plutonium.

By controlling the time, the content of plutonium-240, which cannot be used as a fission raw material, can be controlled to a certain proportion, which is enough to ensure that most of the components are plutonium-239.

Looking at the massive reactors and the uranium rods being irradiated, and after carefully learning about the production process, capacity, procedures, controls, and subsequent separation and purification, Professor Yu Qing felt slightly more relaxed.

Over two days, he inspected several factories, covering various aspects such as hydrogen bomb manufacturing, uranium enrichment, plutonium-239 production, storage and dismantling of nuclear bombs, and requisition of existing materials.

The inspection concluded that the results were largely in line with his previous expectations, and even better than expected.

Based on the current situation, the 360 tons of fissile fuel equivalent to 2.6 tons of weapons-grade uranium-235 needed to manufacture 3.6 million standard hydrogen bombs can be fully achieved.

Then I can focus most of my energy on the last and most important thing in the coming period.

Using nuclear proliferation, the final plutonium-239, equivalent to 10,000 tons of uranium-235, was produced to fill the last gap in the required raw materials.

Back at the hydrogen bomb manufacturing team's command building, after dealing with some urgent documents, he looked at his deputy.

"From now on, you can handle all the daily work. As long as it doesn't involve the overall plan, you can make your own decisions."

"Director Yu, you..."

Professor Yu Qing smiled and said, "I am the proposer, main person in charge, and leader of the nuclear proliferation plan. If I don't go to the site to oversee and direct it, who will?"

The deputy lowered his head slightly.

This matter is indeed very important. But is it really so important that team leader Yu Qing actually goes to the site to oversee things?
Not necessarily.

Normally, he should be the one overseeing the overall situation here, and then he should be sending a deputy to the front line to manage the nuclear breeding project.

By doing this, he clearly intends to take full responsibility for the nuclear proliferation program, both nominally and practically, leaving no room for misunderstanding, so that his descendants will have no one to blame but himself...

(End of this chapter)