A whole new level of understatement. ;*[} 60 to 80 KILOGRAMS left over?? What bugs me is the millions of dollars those billets represent...finally, it looks like if your plutonium ignites you're basically screwed.....it even decomposed the freon extinguisher!
I'm pretty sure "don't try this at home" is the only unnecessary warning label on the planet. I do however highly recommended the oral consumption of gasoline.
Yes... I just happen to have 60-80 kg of weapons grade plutonium at home...shhhh, don't tell anyone! PS: This is one material that NEVER, EVER... DO N0T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.... POUR WATER ON IT! [because the water can act as a moderator and cause a criticality incident....]
It's rare to find pictures of plutonium in quantity. And here we see a 2kg puck burning. Amazing stuff. It brings into perspective that even Plutonium is "just" a material. Nothing magical about it. You just need a lab the size of a city to handle it. And tuna cans.
And at millions per gram you also need a train full of large bills for a small test. And another train load to clean up. Then 9 more trian loads to store the mess.
@@tireballastserviceofflorid7771 it would take a lifetime to find what redtape you through after you find the agencies you did know existed[SOOOOOOO MANY]. then before you can purchase it. arrested as terrorist. and your dog executed. cops love to do that. #puppycide thefreethoughtproject
I find it way more interesting than most materials. It has 7 different allotropes, all with different metallurgical qualities (which is why it's so difficult to machine) It's super heavy, pyrophoric, radioactive. And completely man made on earth.
@@tireballastserviceofflorid7771 I am sure after burning it every single bit of that smoke Pu oxide smoke and ash was condensed and collected to be made into metal again.
Can't thank you enough for posting this video. Truly amazing and educational. I'll always keep some magnesium oxide in my house in case my plutonium catches fire.
Any metal fire is scary enough but a metal that emits strong ionizing radiation? Still, many would say they'd rather play with plutonium isotopes than explore the "interesting" avenues of fluorine chemistry.
They used cheaper reactor grade plutonium for these combustion tests. It comes from conventional reactor fuel rods that are reprocessed. They ran a batch or two for experimental and testing purposes.
You can simulate the plutonium burning with a metal called cerium. Was rather surprised they tried halon as it is a major NO-NO to use it on any kind of burning reactive metal. Cerium is the metal that gives cigarette lighters their ignition sparks, to see how a plutonium fire would burn heat a cigarette lighter flint till it ignites and drop it on concrete. 😲 If you disturb a burning plutonium fire, it will burn more violently. Argon gas is used to fill gloveboxes for machining the stuff. An emergency back up extiguishing media of a glassy sand that forms a low melting eutectic crust or a metal alloy powder is also available. 🤓
@@wolu9456 That part became a superfund site and we spent a fortune managing all the contaminated substances. Or in the USSR, they dumped all that crap, including the waste fission products, into a big holding tank, where the fission products provided a steady heat source, and wouldn't you know, once it boiled dry, the nitric acid plus a few other chemicals, under high temperature, form ammonium nitrate. They were doing this on the scale of many tons, and yeah, they triggered a ~100 ton convention explosion of ammonium nitrate, which, fine, that's not a big deal, but it's dispersing radioactive fission products all over the place. That area is now a "national park", off limits to the public -- see "Kyshtym disaster".
This is truly the most amazing thing I have ever seen! Because of contradictory to popular believe, seeing plutonium behaving so gentile like this is far off from what everyone would tell you! Thank you very much for sharing this with the scientific community! 🙏😃
Why do you assume the burning of plutonium would be some violent event? 🤦♂️ This is a *chemical* reaction, simple oxidation. A quick look at the periodic table indicates it is not the most reactive metal in the universe. This is about what I expected to see. Only real issue with this I have is the quality of the video but like dude said, it isn't something they just do for the hell of it. The stuff is incredibly expensive to obtain.
WRONG ! News Flash,..... dateline, 1957, .... Plutonium fire at Rocky Flats Weapons Plant ! News Flash,...... dateline 1969,..... Mother's Day ,.... Plutonium fire again at Rocky Flats Weapons Plant ! Resulting in the MOST EXPENSIVE INDUSTRIAL FIRE IN U.S. HISTORY ! The plutonium is PYROPHORIC and can ignite spontaneously even inside the glove boxes which is what happened from the scraps inside a glove box of the Plutonium Fabrication Bldg. The fires were so intense that the use of water was a last resort since water is NEVER used because it moderates the neutron reaction and can cause a CRITICALITY EVENT ! Read the book, " ATOMIC ACCIDENTS" and learn how many times CRITICALITY EVENTS happened by accident,... killing many people !
This hits home for me. I've visited a vacuum lathe used for designing warheads. The question of handling the turnings has always been a question in my mind. This example was what I was thinking might be a possible outcome.
The chuck is coupled by a magnetic clutch into an argon filled glove box. Relatively normal tools are used for machining. Chips are sucked into a special criticality safe vacuum cleaner with a built-in neutron detector with the HEPA filter recirculating the argon inside. The whole machining center is at a slightly negative pressure relative to atmosphere.
@@christopherleubner6633 thanks for a more thorough explanation of the equipment I saw. I was shown that lathe while I was in the lab. I didn't see it in operation but a simplified explanation was given to me at the time. There was, at the time a lot of security about certain processes being performed there.
Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant where 2 of the worst and most expensive industrial fires in the USA occured ,..... 1957 and the 1969 Mother's Day Fire were the result of Plutonium scraps and shavings spontaneously igniting and spreading from 1 glove box to another ! All the various machining and casting operations had cans of oil to extinguish any Plutonium fires that started by smothering the Plutonium and omitting the oxygen . Later, fire sensors were installed in the glove boxes on Plutonium stored in Benelex plastic enclosures as a fire prevention measure . However, production was slowed and workers blocked the fire sensors to speed up production . The resulting fire nearly took out the roof of the building which would have spread Plutonium easily to Denver and beyond ! Watch video ,.... " Secrets of a Bomb Factory " also analysis of the Rocky Flats Fires !
This great stuff thanks for putting it on here for everyone to see its good info an thats probably sumones gradpa ,dad, uncle an they can all ways hear him narrating a great video 👍👍👍👍
The amazing thing about this video is the primitive apparatus used for the test. Just gonna put 2 kilos of Plutonium on this fire proof sheet and put a ring around it 'for safety reasons', then set it on fire and see if we have anything that will put out the fire. Very smart people were doing this, but it still sounds like Homer Simpson class nuclear research.
@@ACF1901 Actually I agree with the foul mouthed one. $4 million dollars per pound to make not inclusive of manufacturing facility set up cost or the life cost/ damage radioactive pollution has done to humankind and everything else it destroys. We shouldn't have created this stuff, or been setting 80kg of it on fire in a lab...... I think Mr potty mouth could not have been more concise and there is actually an argument in their statement. Just not a fancy one with big words.
These were very costly experiments. The Pu was designated for recovery and would have been oxidized anyway. The experiments we are watching would have been highly classified. There concerns at the time may have been more about fire and material containment than extinguishment. These studies probably helped establish dry-box and other containment enclosure limits for Pu fire control. I would have liked to watch the same experiments with Thorium, which gives off the most beautiful blue hue when burning, but would have burned through the stainless dry-box bottom in a split second.
Hmmm...Rocky Flats had some horrific plutonium fires that were very hard to extinguish. Machine turnings in large amounts once burning just dont go out. Water will actually accelerate the fire.
The title of this is old-school science horror. The thought of burning plutonium is nightmarish. I really like that you narrated it with first-hand knowledge of what was happening and gave perspective, its probably the only safety video I'd recommend to my friends, lol. I forwarded it to a few friends that are firefighters. I got here thanks to @RadioactiveDrew.
So this is why my friend from Los Alamos told me they had buckets of mag oxide sand in many of the labs he serviced as a maintenance technician. Told some crazy stories about having to fix a mill mid operation. Said you had to dress in secret clothing and spend minutes working max. He lost his nerve after seeing many friends with cancer. I wonder how much radiation is released during the fire. And at what oxidation state does the plutonium end up at? Can the metal be recovered still? Very interesting.
Mixed oxidation states, it pretends to be 3 and 5 plus iirc. Yup they are very funny about some types of research, and they like to compartmentalize it. Hence you may have a q for something but not for another project on site. Also the person doing the machining and the maintenance have no idea what the part is for. Plutonium is used for all kinds of research ranging from neutron sources to acellerator targets to nukes to special reactors and thermal batteries for space and deep sea stuff. Machined Plutonium is usually for variants of nuclear weapons parts or precision (micro scale) reactor parts.
@christopherleubner6633 Back, when my friend was working there, The US was in full nuke production and still doing underground testing. I'm guessing the labs are doing much different stuff now.
Chemical reactions do not interfere with ionizing radiation which is something that happens in the nucleus of an atom. The amount released would be the same if the lump did not burn and can be precisely calculated.
The "Demon core" plutonium sphere was a different kettle of fish to these experiments. The one thing they have in common, material aside, is that these were days of pioneering fissile material science and really they were just given a brief on what the scientific/military/government brass wanted to know and left to play with things how they saw fit.
It wasn't especially dangerous just sitting around. Arranging experiments capable of causing criticality where a human was the only "safety" control? That is scary.
cat637d Yes, I believe Felt is still around. This video was almost lost from the archives forever. The last known VHS copy belonged to Felt so we asked his son to make us a copy. He subsequently sent us a DVD, which after getting Felt's permission, I then uploaded to RU-vid to give back to the scientific community.
Excellent analogy. Pu mostly burns like charcoal. If you use Pu238, it generates enough heat from radioactive decay to power satellites. No combustion needed!
Does this mean pushing the metal into a confined space, made of steel will help extinguish a plutonium fire? For instance, a long narrow steel container, which can reduce the area of sinter, while giving maximum area for heat dissipation? This was really fascinating.
NO !!!! The LAST THING you would ever want to do is to re-combine any Plutonium into a pile as it could cause a CRITICALITY EVENT ! Thats why the shape of finished Plutonium, even castings are only half round and NEVER brought together ! The shape of a TOMATO can, is a formula for catastrophe, or a ball shape ! Read about the 1969 Mother's Day Fire at Rocky Flats ! To get more perspective on how Plutonium works, read the book, " ATOMIC ACCIDENTS " !
@@hopefilledsinner3911 You are making stuff up. These are closed circulation systems with dense mechanical and chemical filters. There is nothing criminal about using plutonium outside warfare.
No, those elements are almost perfectly inert. They only form molecules at highly excited states. They would smother the fire and they are used in gloveboxes to prevent fires.
Oh geez...well you don't often see Halon being so desperately ineffective... Anyway, so we weren't quite successful in extinguishing Pu fire with pretty much anything except Mg sand ? I mean as far as the practical application is concerned. The only thing that I would like to know more now...well theee...Extinguishing Characteristics of Critical Plutonium Metal Fires.
I saw a video of someone burning a google nest speaker it burns the same way and is indestructible? They wanted to see what was in side of it? crazy right! Can't find that video anymore!
I was working at Los Alamos at the time. The report was easy to find, but the video was MIA. Someone in the group still had connections with Mr Felt and his son was kind enough to send us a digital copy. He also gave us permission to post it on RU-vid. This is a very important video for anyone working with Pu and similar combustible metals. It also helps workers get an appreciation for how they respond in a fire - paramount for anyone in the fire service potentially responding to a Pu Fire. Unfortunately, there are many extinguishing agents available for use in today's market that were unavailable at the time this research was completed. I'm trying to get more agents tested so we can use the best available in our nuclear facilities utilizing Pu, but as one can imagine, this is a difficult proposition...
Turning Plutonium on a lathe would likely leave fine shavings and the heat generated from frictional resistance I would think could ignite Plutonium. In these tests it would seem would endanger workers exposed to the Plutonium and its gaseous oxides.
It is turned in lathe that is in a glove box with a magnetic clutch from the machine motor itself. The glove box is filled with argon or nitrogen, though sometimes helium is used. The stuff machines very similar to gummy aluminum alloys, but if you tried machining in air it will burn like ferrocerium shavings. This would be very very bad.
Using graphite powder to put out a Plutonium fire requires balls of steel. Graphite is a moderator, meaning that it significantly reduces the critical mass. If you aren't sure about how much Plutonium is burning, and you pour graphite on it, you could end up with something that makes you forget all about that little fire. Then your hair falls out.
It's more likely to be related to the 1957 Rocky Flats fire in the US than the Windscale fire in the UK. The former were plutonium shavings fires in gloveboxes, whereas the latter was a uranium/graphite fire in a reactor. (Also, he says in the very beginning this is research conducted at the Hanford site, which is in the US.)
I saw an old training film by Dupont, the people who first made Halon. They actually called it Freon 1301. Maybe they changed the name for copyright reasons.
It can be pyrophoric, depending on the specific surface area of the material. All elemental metals are pyrophoric, it's just that some require a higher surface area to volume ratio. At the fundamental level, it's a matter of reaction/oxidation rate, energy absorption into the material, and diffusion into the environment.
Plutonium can react with nitrogen to produce plutonium(III) nitride. This reaction takes place at a temperatures near 1000°C. The Atomic Energy Comission (predecessor to Department of Energy) did testing of liquid nitrogen on burning metals in 1972 and found it to be effective in certain situations, so it's very likely that the cooling effect of liquid nitrogen would overwhelm the sustained exothermic reaction of the plutonium. Apart from encapsulating the plutonium to stop it from reacting, cooling is the most effective way to extinguish a burning plutonium fire.
@@calibob2001 What atmosphere is in the glove boxes during normal use? 1000°C is well below the melting points of common stainless steel alloys: www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=103
Is this guy okay? He keeps mixing up his words lol. He calls it Halon 1301 and then just goes to calling it freon... He also keeps coughing directly into the microphone. Ah the 60s, a time of science.
It's unlikely. As Pu oxidizes it expands. Pu Oxide is very fluffy and light and doesnt lend to becoming a criticalicality favorable geometry. The Rocky Flats fire of 69 is a testament to how difficult it is to accidentally create a crit scenario when fighting a Pu fire with water.
@@calibob2001 WRONG ! After the fire fighters used up all the CO2 and chemical extinguishers in their attempt to put out the Plutonium fire, their only choice was now WATER ! HOWEVER ,... they were very careful NOT to use a heavy jet stream but rather a fogging shower spray and never to push any Plutonium into a large pile for fear of a Criticality Event ! Water will MODERATE the neutrons and allow for chain reactions, just like in a WATER MODERATED REACTOR !
Kids in a shop... playing with whatever is laying around. Copper turnings , Iron filings , graphite powder. .. after that initial scientific burn the" whoa that's cool "switch was flipped and the flood gates open . . I guess I would be doing the same, where and when will this ever happen again was probably the thought. .
"after that initial scientific burn" Uh, they were _all_ scientific burns! The materials chosen weren't "whatever is laying around", they were selected as theoretically valid extinguishing agents. People who were "playing" with plutonium often didn't fare well, particularly in a configuration prone to a prompt criticality.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 After the Demon Core claimed its second victim, they banned playing with those things by hand. All experiments had to be remotely controlled.
@@josephastier7421 Criticality can occur only with critical mass involved. There is no remote control practice with most subcritical manipulations. People normally work with plutonium compounds in gloveboxes.
It's said, that when machinists had been given pieces of uranium for the first atom bombs, some of the swarf wouldn't come back as demanded. Turns out that they were turning the material into flints for lighters due to a cerium shortage. 😂
Gather the oxide and nitride and recycle them back. You do understand this element is expensive, useful and guarded, right? And you just think it would be dumped somewhere? :facepalm:
Lip smackin and whistlin ,love that tastey plutonium! How many millions of dollars worth of " experiment "? Or is this some of the " missing " plutonium? Half expected him to start talking about plutonium fried chicken!!!!!
The Missing Plutonium went to Israel, with the blessing of our government who "lost" it from one facility. These tests didn't cost much, did you listen to the part where he said the material was surplus that had to be oxidized anyway? Perfect opportunity to put some plutonium fire myths to the test.
what gases are given off? did plutonium go into the atmosphere? what is the price of plutonium? I would imagine a heap of money was spent on this material...........
No gases are given off. No, it was done in a glovebox, *obviously* . Several thousands of dollars per gramme. You do understand atoms are not destroyed when things are burned, right?
When you review the large Pu fire events, water is the only agent that's ever been successful at extinguishing them. It comes down to mitigating hydrogen generation, heat removal, and protecting the combustibles burning... what we've seen is that fighting the stuff burning (not the Pu) is the most effective way to extinguish these fires when they get out of hand.
