
A tale of lost WW2 uranium cubes shows why Germany’s nuclear program failed - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/physicists-hunt-uranium-cubes-to-shed-light-on-germanys-failed-nuclear-reactor/
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WillPostForFood
_The cubes are only slightly radioactive and don 't pose a health concern,
according to Koeth. Since uranium is so dense, "It winds up shielding itself,"
he said. "The radiation you measure from it is only coming from the surface."_

Interesting, and answered the first question the popped into my mind when
hearing about uranium cubes: are they dangerous?

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acidburnNSA
It's moreso that the half-life of both natural uranium isotopes is very long;
billions of years. When something has a very long half-life, it emits fewer
energetic particles per second, and inflicts lower dose (energy deposited),
and therefore lower health risk.

All the daughter products are in secular equilibrium and so are also "rate
limited".

When you split uranium nuclei in nuclear chain reactors, many of the resulting
"half-uranium" fission products are neutron rich, and have very short half-
lives. They quickly decay towards stability and along the way shoot out lots
of radiation very quickly. This is high-level nuclear material and is
dangerous.

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JoeDaDude
Now that we are on the lookout for the remaining missing cubes, perhaps they
will show up on eBay, just like the (unused) graphite block for a Chernobyl
type reactor:

[https://www.ebay.com/itm/original-Soviet-USSR-Chernobyl-
nucl...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/original-Soviet-USSR-Chernobyl-nuclear-
reactor-RBMK-1000-core-graphite-block-/233117411654)

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read_if_gay_
Archive link? It's 404 on ebay.

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StreamBright
[https://logout.hu/bejegyzes/lauda/original_soviet_ussr_chern...](https://logout.hu/bejegyzes/lauda/original_soviet_ussr_chernobyl_nuclear_reactor_rbm.html)

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woliveirajr
> So Germany's secretive, isolationist approach actually hampered their
> nuclear program, because the two groups weren't sharing information or
> resources.

I don't think that this is a problem thar is already solved in researches.
Just my humble experience, but seems that very few projects involve
coordination of groups. It's more likely to share small fragments of each
group findings, only when the group is ahead of what is being
published/revealed.

Even when you are inside the same organization, you are competing for
resources, promotions, glory, money, hand-shakes. And even when you aren't,
the other group might be.

Personal achievements are above any other interest. To overcome that only
great organization, with great people, spending time in non-technical matter.

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duxup
I remember reading about the Soviet era space program and that to some extent
it's speed and efficiency was credited to the program's leadership that in
spite of the system were able to convince or compel (by pulling the
appropriate levers of government) various groups to work together who
otherwise really didn't have any reason to do so. However that didn't last
forever and the program started to stall.

It seems to be a universal problem.

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ethbro
> program's leadership

Sergei Korolev

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev)

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duxup
Great engineer and bureaucrat... pretty rare combo.

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IlegCowcat
I have one very old uranium crystalware specimen sitting here - been in family
for ages - it's awfully beautiful looking and our deep-blue LED christmas
lights actually make it glow eerie.

The deeper-blue (indigo) LEDs reach into the wavelengths that the uranium
glass glows at!

