Chapter 224 Firefly Configuration
After reading the secret reports of Feiyu Company and Qingye Airlines, Li Qingye saw another good news.
This good news was reported from Black Tiger Canyon.
At this time, over at the Black Tiger Canyon.
Dr. Lewis is in the "mine area".
The so-called mining area is actually a hidden underground experimental site, which is ostensibly a lead-zinc mine belonging to Qingye Mining Company.
Explosives are often detonated to create seismic waves, disguised as signs of underground mineral mining.
For explosions of several hundred kilograms, the tiny seismic waves produced will be detected by seismic monitoring stations, but generally will not arouse suspicion.
The underground of this "mining area" has long been hollowed out and built into an experimental site. In addition to an underground tunnel, there are five underground spaces of different sizes.
At this time, we are in Experimental Field No. 3.
Dr. Lewis, his colleagues and research assistants were busy assembling a basketball-sized device.
The core of the device is a small vacuum space, about the size of a sesame seed.
Surrounding this ultra-small sub-vacuum space are 16 cones. At the top of these cones is a device similar to the tip of a ballpoint pen. The "ball" clamped by the "tip" is a uranium 235 with a mass of 0.01 grams and a purity of 99.99%.
That is to say, the uranium fuel in this device is 0.16 grams.
The remaining space in the cone was filled with TNT explosives, a total of 4.8 kilograms of TNT.
The sphere, made up of 16 cones , is wrapped in a layer of composite material 30 mm thick.
The innermost layer of this composite material is an alloy radiation reflection layer, the middle layer is a high-temperature resistant composite ceramic layer (can withstand a high temperature of 5836 degrees Celsius), and the last outer layer is a super-strong integrated alloy that is enough to withstand the internal TNT explosion for 3.2 seconds.
The innermost alloy radiation reflection layer has another very special function. It can mutate into a superconductor under ultra-high pressure.
At the same time, metal powder is added between the TNT and the gold alloy radiation reflection layer, which will generate a large amount of electron flow at the moment of the explosion, thereby stimulating the mutant superconductor and forming a strong magnetic field, which will confine the explosion for 3.2 seconds.
That is, after the TNT core is detonated, the entire explosion energy will be trapped inside the sphere for 3.2 seconds.
Don't underestimate these 3.2 seconds. It is because of these 3.2 seconds that the uranium 235 beads at the top of the cone are instantly squeezed in that sub-vacuum space by high temperature and high pressure, forcing violent nuclear fission to occur between the uranium 235.
However, due to the existence of the magnetic field, the energy of the nuclear explosion was not released immediately, but was squeezed in the core area.
The advantage of this design is that the fuel utilization rate of nuclear fission increases sharply, and the critical mass of nuclear fuel explosion can be reduced to a few milligrams.
The "Firefly" No. 3 in front of us is the ultra-small atomic bomb secretly developed by the Black Tiger Canyon Base.
This is one of the few solutions that Levis and a group of scientific researchers selected after combining various new materials from Sapiens and simulating billions of times using supercomputers.
The entire Firefly 3 weighs 17.3 kilograms and is equipped with 0.16 grams of uranium 235 with a purity of 99.99%. The explosive equivalent is 2.72 tons and the nuclear fuel utilization rate is 85.6%.
After assembly is completed.
Levis and others, wearing protective clothing, left the experimental site and came to a special data monitoring room.
"The third test begins."
"Activate the transport system."
The electric rail car carrying Firefly 3 slowly moved towards the test site of the experimental field.
The entire test site, 343 meters underground, is a hemispherical cavity with a radius of 50 meters. Several layers of artificial structures are set up around it to reduce the shock wave of the explosion.
"Detonate!"
3.2 seconds later.
boom……
A small fireball exploded in the center of the test site, followed by light radiation, ionizing radiation, thermal radiation and shock waves.
Various data collectors will feed back the detected data to the biological computer in the monitoring room.
The seismic wave monitoring equipment installed in the surrounding areas only detected a weak seismic wave with a power of only a few hundred kilograms of TNT.
But in reality, Firefly 3 produced an explosion equivalent to 2.72 tons of TNT.
After looking through the data, Levis nodded with satisfaction: "The firefly-type ultra-small atomic bomb can now be mass-produced."
"The next step is to improve the old warheads," said another researcher.
There are three main reasons why they developed this ultra-small atomic bomb.
One is to conduct nuclear explosion experiments.
This goal has been achieved. They have successfully conducted three ultra-small nuclear explosion tests in an underground test site near Black Tiger Canyon.
The outside world knows nothing about this.
The core reason why it was possible to conceal it from the outside world is that the explosion equivalent is small enough, with an average equivalent of only a few tons. In addition, the shock-absorbing structure layer of the test site means that even if the outside world detects it, they will only think that they are blasting underground minerals.
The second purpose is to improve the utilization rate of nuclear fuel .
Currently, Sapiens can refine 150 to 180 kilograms of uranium 235 every month, which is enough to produce three 300,000-ton atomic bombs (Resol 30). A single Resol 30 requires 52 kilograms of uranium 235 raw materials, and the nuclear fuel utilization rate is only 30%.
There are currently 42 Reinhard 30 missiles in stock, as well as 283 kilograms of high-purity uranium 235 raw materials.
After switching to the new configuration of the Firefly type, the same explosion equivalent of 300,000 tons can be achieved, but the Firefly type only needs 18 kilograms of uranium 235 raw material.
This means that after all the Rei-30s currently in stock are converted into Firefly-type atomic bombs, approximately 120 Firefly-type atomic bombs with a yield of 300,000 tons can be produced.
The third purpose.
The purpose is to improve the atomic trigger of the B43 hydrogen bomb. After all, the atomic trigger of the B43 was designed . Not only does it cause serious waste of nuclear fuel, but it also has relatively high radioactive pollution and uses plutonium as raw material.
Levis not only wanted to use the Firefly-type atomic bomb as the hydrogen bomb trigger, but also planned to improve the configuration of the B43.
Ancient hydrogen bombs such as the B43 often have a relatively low nuclear fuel utilization rate, only about 15% to 20%.
The Fiery Sun 100 model, which imitates the B43, currently requires 50 kilograms of deuterium as raw material to achieve an explosive equivalent of 1 million tons.
Through supercomputing and the current firefly-type atomic bomb explosion experiment, Levis has found the direction of miniaturization of hydrogen bombs and also found a solution to improve the utilization rate of hydrogen bomb fuel.
It is estimated that the explosion equivalent of a miniaturized hydrogen bomb can be compressed to a minimum of 1 ton (the atomic trigger produces 350 kilograms of TNT energy), but the volume is difficult to compress and the weight is about 20 kilograms.
According to the models and data simulated by Lewis and others in supercomputers, the fuel utilization rate of the firefly-type hydrogen bomb can also reach about 80% to 90%.
If the loading amount is still maintained at 50 kilograms of deuterium, the power can probably reach 6.3 million tons of equivalent, an increase of 6.3 times.
This power is obviously excessive, and the warhead weight of 900 kg is not conducive to lightweighting.
Dr. Lewis has been discussing with engineers in the nuclear engineering department the development of a new warhead with a yield of 100,000 tons and a weight of less than 100 kilograms.
This is also the core idea of the current great powers, that is, to use a hydrogen bomb warhead with an equivalent of hundreds of thousands of tons, and then load several sub-warheads in a missile.
The destructive power of 10 hydrogen bombs with a yield of 100,000 tons is several times greater than that of 1 hydrogen bomb with a yield of 1 million tons.
From the perspective of cost-effectiveness, medium-yield cluster hydrogen bombs are the current mainstream option.
The firefly-type hydrogen bomb has another advantage, which is that the reaction is more thorough, resulting in a much lower amount of residual radioactive material, so it can basically be called a clean nuclear bomb.
