Плутоний-бериллиевые пули — Transcript

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1. 0:01Concluding the episode on sabotage
2. 0:03nuclear charges, I mentioned that the
3. 0:05idea of nuclear bullets arose from the
4. 0:07GRU leadership's realization that
5. 0:09placing nuclear backpacks was
6. 0:11impossible after hostilities began, or
7. 0:13even during a period of rising threats.
8. 0:17But the Beryllium-Polonium bullet,
9. 0:20proposed to Ivashutin’s people by
10. 0:22designers from the Avangard facility in
11. 0:24Arzamas-16, which I discussed in the
12. 0:27first part of this series, did not
13. 0:29satisfy the GRU operatives in the
14. 0:31slightest. Firstly, due to the short
15. 0:34half-life of polonium, the shelf life
16. 0:36of this bullet was effectively measured
17. 0:38in weeks. Secondly, due to the very
18. 0:42intense alpha decay of this same
19. 0:44polonium, the bullet was constantly
20. 0:46heating up and had to be stored in a
21. 0:48special container with forced cooling.
22. 0:51Thirdly, at that very time, the
23. 0:53Lunokhod construction program was
24. 0:55underway, which also required polonium
25. 0:57for its power sources. And therefore,
26. 1:02the Mayak production association, which
27. 1:04produced the polonium, could provide
28. 1:06the manufacturers at Arzamas-16 with
29. 1:08only a very small amount of this
30. 1:10material, enough for literally three
31. 1:12experimental prototypes. But most
32. 1:16importantly, despite all its other
33. 1:18flaws, the bullet could not cause
34. 1:20significant destruction to any
35. 1:22important strategic object due to its
36. 1:24low explosive power. And so the GRU
37. 1:27operatives abandoned the
38. 1:29Beryllium-Polonium bullet and, instead
39. 1:31of the Avangard facility in the closed
40. 1:34city of Arzamas-16, turned to
41. 1:36Academician Zababakhin, working in
42. 1:38another closed city, Chelyabinsk-70.
43. 1:42And we will talk about what Zababakhin
44. 1:44proposed to Ivashutin in today's
45. 1:45episode. I’m Sergey Shumakov, and you
46. 1:49are watching the Truth of Life channel.
47. 2:01There, in Chelyabinsk-70, now known as
48. 2:04the city of Snezhinsk, at the
49. 2:06All-Russian Research Institute of
50. 2:09Technical Physics led by Zababakhin,
51. 2:11they decided to do without rare,
52. 2:14expensive, and finicky polonium
53. 2:16altogether. Furthermore, they opted to
54. 2:21exclude chemical explosives from the
55. 2:23bullet, explaining that the St.
56. 2:25Petersburg International Declaration,
57. 2:28signed on November 29, 1868, prohibited
58. 2:31it. (Old Style date). Fortunately for
59. 2:36both Zababakhin’s team and
60. 2:38Ivashutin’s men, the declaration said
61. 2:41nothing about placing plutonium or
62. 2:43beryllium in bullets. Moreover, it said
63. 2:48nothing about placing a neutron
64. 2:50initiator in the form of an ion gun
65. 2:52into small arms bullets. But the laws
66. 2:56of physics and technological
67. 2:58limitations unexpectedly stood in the
68. 3:00way of placing the latter into a bullet
69. 3:02. When Zababakhin’s team ordered such
70. 3:06a tube from the Dukhov Research
71. 3:08Institute of Automatics in Moscow, its
72. 3:11then-director, Nikolai Ivanovich Pavlov
73. 3:14, stated that his institute could not
74. 3:17fit an ion tube into a rifle-caliber
75. 3:19bullet, nor into the 10.45 mm diameter
76. 3:22bullet that the Arzamas-16 developers
77. 3:25had stuffed with the polonium-beryllium
78. 3:27charge. As a result, the client,
79. 3:32represented by the Main Intelligence
80. 3:34Directorate of the General Staff, had
81. 3:36to agree to a 13-millimeter bullet,
82. 3:38which could be fired from a standard
83. 3:4012.7 mm caliber barrel. And the
84. 3:44increase in caliber to this size was
85. 3:46also dictated by considerations of
86. 3:47radiation safety. While Beryllium-9 did
87. 3:52not emit any radiation at all, and gold
88. 3:55or even nickel foil was sufficient to
89. 3:58shield the alpha radiation of Polonium-
90. 4:01210, the bullet being developed in
91. 4:03Chelyabinsk-70 was intended to contain
92. 4:06actual weapons-grade plutonium. This
93. 4:11weapons-grade plutonium emits not only
94. 4:13alpha particles but also genuine
95. 4:15neutrons, against which neither nickel
96. 4:17nor gold foil provides protection.
97. 4:21Therefore, under the copper casing of
98. 4:23the bullet, there was also a cadmium
99. 4:25jacket that reliably absorbed the
100. 4:27neutrons spontaneously emitted by the
101. 4:29plutonium. The main part of the charge
102. 4:32was a mechanical mixture of plutonium
103. 4:34and beryllium pressed into a small
104. 4:35sphere. Moreover, this mixture was
105. 4:38composed such that there was one atom
106. 4:40of beryllium for every atom of
107. 4:42plutonium. Admittedly, in terms of
108. 4:44atomic mass within the charge, there
109. 4:46were only 30 mg of beryllium for every
110. 4:495 g of plutonium. Nevertheless, this
111. 4:52beryllium was a very important part of
112. 4:53the multi-stage plan conceived by the
113. 4:55scientists at Babakhin. The first move
114. 4:58in this multi-stage plan was to
115. 5:00generate a powerful electric current
116. 5:03pulse. The fact is that despite the
117. 5:06increased size of the bullet, there
118. 5:08still wasn't enough space for a
119. 5:10sufficiently capacious capacitor, so a
120. 5:12cleverly devised one-time
121. 5:14pressure-activated generator was placed
122. 5:16inside the bullet. It consisted of two
123. 5:20permanent magnets facing each other
124. 5:22with like poles. The rear magnet was
125. 5:26fixed, while the front one was located
126. 5:28in the very nose of the bullet, right
127. 5:30behind the ballistic tip. And when the
128. 5:33bullet struck a solid obstacle, the
129. 5:35front magnet would rapidly move toward
130. 5:37the rear one. The rate of magnetic flux
131. 5:41changed sharply in the space between
132. 5:43the magnets, and a powerful electric
133. 5:45current was generated in a copper wire
134. 5:47coil located right there. This current
135. 5:51powered the very ion tube which, just
136. 5:53as in a traditional nuclear device,
137. 5:55accelerated deuterium ions. Due to
138. 5:59dimensional constraints, it was
139. 6:01impossible to make the ion accelerator
140. 6:02powerful enough. It was, of course,
141. 6:05impossible to accelerate these ions to
142. 6:07high speeds. And these very deuterium
143. 6:09ions, otherwise known as deuterons.
144. 6:12They could not overcome the Coulomb
145. 6:14barrier of the heavy plutonium nucleus,
146. 6:16which contains 94 protons, and simply
147. 6:18bounced off the plutonium nuclei. That
148. 6:22is precisely why, in addition to
149. 6:24plutonium, this pressed sphere also
150. 6:26contained beryllium, whose nucleus has
151. 6:28only four protons; therefore, the
152. 6:30Coulomb barrier of the beryllium
153. 6:32nucleus was many times weaker than that
154. 6:34of the plutonium nucleus and,
155. 6:36consequently, was easily breached by
156. 6:38fairly low-speed deuterons. When this
157. 6:42neutron hit the beryllium nucleus, the
158. 6:45addition of one proton caused it to
159. 6:47transform from a beryllium nucleus into
160. 6:49a boron nucleus, releasing 4.36
161. 6:51megaelectronvolts of energy in the
162. 6:54process. But besides the release of
163. 6:57this energy, the product of this
164. 6:59reaction was also a rather fast neutron
165. 7:01. In most cases, this neutron crashed
166. 7:04into a plutonium nucleus. Why in most
167. 7:06cases? Because it is incomparably
168. 7:10larger. And upon this impact, the same
169. 7:13thing happened that occurs in classic
170. 7:15nuclear weapons. The plutonium nucleus
171. 7:19split into two nuclei of lighter
172. 7:21elements, while three or four free
173. 7:23neutrons appeared, and a massive 207
174. 7:25megaelectronvolts of energy was
175. 7:27released. If this neutron hit another
176. 7:31beryllium nucleus, what usually happens
177. 7:33in a neutron bomb would occur. The
178. 7:36beryllium nucleus would split into two
179. 7:38alpha particles, and there would be two
180. 7:41free neutrons. However, each of them
181. 7:43was no longer fast, but thermal.
182. 7:46Therefore, if they encountered
183. 7:48beryllium nuclei again, they would
184. 7:50bounce off them, after which they would
185. 7:52sooner or later hit a plutonium nucleus
186. 7:54, also causing it to fission. The same
187. 7:58two alpha particles formed during the
188. 8:00destruction of a beryllium nucleus by a
189. 8:02fast neutron (just like in a
190. 8:04beryllium-polonium charge), upon
191. 8:06hitting a beryllium nucleus, would turn
192. 8:08them into a carbon nucleus, releasing
193. 8:115.7 megaelectronvolts of energy and one
194. 8:13more fast neutron, which would split
195. 8:15either a beryllium nucleus or, more
196. 8:17likely, a plutonium nucleus. Of course,
197. 8:21all of this was to create a
198. 8:23self-sustaining chain reaction. The
199. 8:27amount of plutonium in the bullet was
200. 8:29nowhere near enough, because with such
201. 8:31a small amount of plutonium—and there
202. 8:33were only about 5 grams in the bullet
203. 8:35—the probability of each neutron
204. 8:37meeting a plutonium nucleus was 1.84%.
205. 8:44But before the plutonium and the bullet
206. 8:46containing it turned into plasma, 0.94%
207. 8:49of the plutonium contained in the
208. 8:53bullet managed to react. In TNT
209. 8:55equivalent, this was equal to 93.5 kg.
210. 9:00Another 6.4 kg in TNT equivalent was
211. 9:02added by the energy of the
212. 9:04transmutation of beryllium into boron
213. 9:07and beryllium into carbon. And thus,
214. 9:10the power of the bullet was equal to
215. 9:13the power of a 250-kilogram aerial bomb
216. 9:15. And when such a munition exploded,
217. 9:19the shock wave would instantly kill at
218. 9:21a distance of ten meters, and
219. 9:23penetrating radiation at a distance of
220. 9:2513 meters. Fatal exposure to radiation
221. 9:29with delayed effects would persist at a
222. 9:31distance of up to 36 meters from the
223. 9:33center of the explosion. It is clear
224. 9:38that the scope of such a bullet could
225. 9:41only be purely for sabotage, but for
226. 9:43sabotage, such a bullet had a very weak
227. 9:46destructive effect. And despite what
228. 9:50seemed like an impressive TNT
229. 9:52equivalent, the crater it formed had a
230. 9:55diameter of only 1.76 meters, while the
231. 9:57diameter of a crater formed by the
232. 9:59explosion of a 250-kilogram bomb in the
233. 10:02same ground is 8 meters 33 centimeters.
234. 10:07And consequently, such a bullet could
235. 10:09neither destroy a bridge, nor collapse
236. 10:11a tunnel, nor even destroy a large
237. 10:12administrative building. And therefore,
238. 10:16the customer for this munition
239. 10:17ultimately abandoned the nuclear bullet
240. 10:19.