It was figured out, by way of another example, that one pound of the U-235 contains as much energy as 15,000 tons (30,000,000 pounds) of TNT, or 300 carloads of 50 tons each. If this one pound of U-235 exploded within 1/10,000ths of a second, as does ordinary TNT, the pressure produced would be on the order of 100,000- 000,000 atmospheres (ten to the seventeenth power dynes to a square centimetre), about 1,000,000 times the pressure produced by TNT or by nitroglycerine. On the other hand, it was estimated by an explosion expert, the explosion of such a pound of U. 245 would produce a crater much less than 300 feet in radius and probably only 75 feet in radius, The largest amount of explosives ever to have been exploded was 6,000 tons of a mixture of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulphate im Oppau, Germany, about fourteen years ago. That explosion was accidental, as the mixture was supposed to be a fertilizer. The resulting crater was about 600 feet wide and 250 feet deep. The U-235 is what is known as an isotope, or chemical twin of ordinary uranium. Even its existence was not known until a few years ago, and its properties had been unsuspected until a short time ago.
The power from the U-235, it was added, could be applied in many other useful ways. It would provide the most powerful source of neutron rays that might possibly be used in the treatment of cancer, as neutrons are much more powerful than either X-rays or radium The neutron from the U-235 could be used also for the creation of artificially radioactive elements more powerful than radium. They could even be used for making gold out of mercury, but scientists expressed themselves as disdainful of such uses for their newest creative tool.
One of the scientists explained the process of the energy-liberation from U-235 by comparing it with the burning of coal, Whereas coal us oxygen to liberate its energy, he explained, the U-235 uses slow neutrons for the same purpose. The process of combustion in the case of the U-235, he added, is, atom for atom, 100,- 000,000 times as effective as is the case in the combustion of coal. However, as the atomic weight of the uranium is 235, compared with 16 for the oxygen and 12 for the carbon, there are fewer uranium atoms to a given weight than there are oxygen and carbon atoms. This reduces the energy relations of the U-235, com. pared with coal, to a ratio of 5,000,000 to 1
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