Hand rubbing nuclear fusion live in the wilderness

Chapter 435 Five hundred tons of enriched uranium
Thorium, like uranium, is also a radioactive metal element.

After being bombarded with neutrons, it can get uranium-233, which is a potential nuclear fuel.

Compared with uranium, thorium is safer to use in nuclear fuel and has more content in the earth's crust. It is one of the development directions of nuclear energy utilization in the future.

In addition to the higher safety factor, the nuclear waste generated can safely decay in less than 200 years, and the storage capacity of thorium on the earth is also very large, far exceeding that of uranium.

Of course, the storage tonnage of thorium is much greater than that of uranium, and there is a prerequisite, that is, humans have not mastered the method of extracting uranium from seawater.

After all, an average of 30 tons of seawater contains one kilogram of uranium.

Thorium can be used as nuclear fuel, and nuclear waste is easy to handle and the amount of nuclear waste is small, which is a good thing.

And Huaguo's thorium stock (which has been proven) ranks second in the world, second only to Asan.

In addition to nuclear fuel, thorium is also often used to make alloys, and the strength of alloy metals doped with a small amount of thorium will be greatly improved.

Various materials such as modern aircraft carrier decks, fighter plane armor, and aerospace rocket shells are inseparable from this kind of thing.

In addition, it is also the main material for manufacturing ultraviolet photocells and advanced lenses, and is one of the basic materials in modern industry.

However, although this material has many uses, it is not very precious. Thorium compounds such as thorium nitrate and thorium oxide are only a little more expensive than silver, and they can be bought on a certain treasure.

Although the amount is large and cheap, thorium has a very important role. It is one of the main materials for the lens material in "laser fusion" in controlled nuclear fusion, and it is also a consumable.

Therefore, the demand for pure thorium in laser fusion is still quite large.

This is why the Korean won is concerned about thorium.

According to the thorium content in this uranium ore, the uranium ore on the bottom of his feet should be uranium thorium ore, not the marked crystalline uranium ore.

Of course, in the eyes of the system, the thorium content in this super uranium mine is nothing, and it does not meet the criteria for judging uranium and thorium mines.

Under the excavation of the X-1 industrial robot, five pits like deep wells were dug.

Han Yuan took out a special explosive from behind and handed it to the robots to bury in the deep pit, and then backfilled part of the soil to hold it down.

These explosives are specially made by him and are specially used to mine uranium ore.

Seeing the robots deploy explosives to backfill the soil, the audience in the live broadcast room was very excited, and they could see the big scene again.

It is a pity that the result this time is destined to disappoint them.

The explosives in the five deep pits were detonated at the same time, and there was no scene of earth shaking and mountain shaking. Except for the backfilled soil in the pits being blown up into the sky, there was only the sound of the explosion, and the sound and movement were not even counted. It's big.

This made the audience in the live broadcast room very sad. They held back for a long time, preparing to watch a big one, but in the end there was no hair, and they immediately condemned in the live broadcast room.

Han Yuan ignored the audience in the live broadcast room, and controlled the aircraft to land on the land cleared by industrial robots.

There are generally three types of uranium mining: open-pit mining, underground mining and in-situ mining.

Needless to say, open-pit mining needs to use explosives or machines to remove the soil and rocks covering the surface of the uranium mine, and then dig out the ore.

As for underground mining, it is mainly used for deep burial of ore bodies. To extract the ore, it is necessary to excavate a roadway leading from the surface to the ore body.

Mining ore in this way is more dangerous. In the past, there were often news of various mine collapses causing miners to be buried. For example, such things often broke out in the coal mines in Xishan.

In-situ mining, which is the method used by KRW this time, is actually generally used in mining areas with a depth greater than 75 meters.

The uranium and thorium mine under his feet is less than five meters deep. In the mineral industry, it is a shallow mine and is more suitable for open-pit mining.

But for South Korean won, in-situ mining is the most suitable.

The so-called in-situ mining is called 'in-situ leaching' in metal mines such as uranium ore.

This method is to use the blasting method to crush the ore in the underground ore body to a predetermined reasonable block size, so that it can produce an ore pile with developed micro-cracks, uniform block size, reasonable gradation, and good permeability.

Then sprinkle the leaching solution from the upper part of the ore heap to selectively leach the valuable metals in the ore, and the leached solution is collected and transferred to the ground for metal recovery.

This method is suitable for dealing with lean ore with large reserves and low grade, which is not suitable for open-pit mining and not worthy of conventional mining.

Huaguo has some low-grade iron ore with large reserves, zinc ore and those small uranium mines are basically mined by this method.

It's just that this method is likely to cause groundwater pollution, so countries are trying their best to prohibit the mining of minerals by 'in-situ leaching'.
After the hole is blasted, the solution that has been configured on the aircraft is carried out.

There are three large pits with a length, width and height of 20m*20m*2m on the ground.

These large pits are used to dilute the leaching solution.

Mining ore by in-situ leaching method needs to sprinkle the leaching solution on the ground, let the leaching solution flow into the mining area along the gaps and gullies, and finally react with the raw ore in the mining area, integrate the required mineral materials into the liquid, and finally be extracted .

This step is actually a part of the ore washing work in the ordinary mining process, but it is carried out underground.

Washing mines naturally requires a lot of water resources.

This is also one of the reasons why South Korean won chooses to mine ore on this gentle slope.

There is a small river not far from this gentle slope, about 100 meters away. The water flow is not very large, but it is enough for mining.

As for why it is necessary to lay a layer of wooden boards on the edge of the built pool instead of directly digging pits to dilute it, it is because the leaching solution used for mining uranium ore this time contains ingredients that will corrode silicon and silicon dioxide to a certain extent.

This is an advantage for the in-situ leaching method, because it can erode the ore in the ground to a certain extent, and improve the mining efficiency.

But for the current Korean won, it is not a good attribute.

His immersion solution is a high-concentration solution prepared in the Amazon rainforest base and needs to be diluted.

The in-situ leaching method requires a large amount of solution to erode the minerals in the ground. This amount is not one ton or two tons, but hundreds or thousands of tons.

It is impossible to bring this amount of aircraft, so it can only bring a high concentration of immersion solution, and then dilute it on site.

On-site dilution is not the key point. The key point is that the solution used this time has a relatively serious corrosion ability to silicon, silicon dioxide, alumina, and calcium oxide.

Therefore, a layer of isolation material needs to be spread inside the large pit dug out on the ground to prevent the solution from contacting the soil during the dilution process.

Of course, this layer of isolation material is not the wood used, but mylar.

These logs with a diameter of more than [-] centimeters are used to reinforce the potholes.

In the process of in-situ leaching, because the solution will erode the ore and take away some elements inside, this will cause pores to appear in the originally solid ore layer, and there will be a risk of collapse under the erosion of running water or solution.

Of course, in reality, this is generally not considered.

Because in reality, the in-situ leaching method is used to mine minerals at a depth of more than 75 meters, and this method is generally used for lean mines.

So even if part of the underground mining area is eroded, there is no big problem, and the soil and rock layers of more than 70 meters can fully support it.

But his side is different. The uranium mine he mined is about five meters deep at the bottom of his feet.

In addition, the rock covered on the surface of the mine layer is cemented conglomerate, which basically has no load-bearing capacity, so the pool for diluting the intrusion fluid needs to be reinforced to prevent it from collapsing during the subsequent washing process.

After all, it takes a long time for melting and invasion, so it is better to be safe.

In addition, after the intrusion liquid has eroded the uranium ore below, the intrusion liquid in the ground must be pumped out again. At that time, these puddles that dilute the intrusion liquid can also be used to preserve the uranium liquid, which serves multiple purposes.

According to his request, these industrial robots use chainsaws to separate the logs that have piled up like hills, and then fix them on the bottom of the dilution pit and the surrounding pit walls.

After it is fixed, spread the polyester plastic film, so that the puddle for temporarily diluting the invading solution is completed.

The three dilution pits are arranged in a straight line. After the river water is brought in to fill it up, the high-concentration solution is poured in according to the ratio. After stirring evenly, the water in the pit can be pumped out for watering.

As for the location of watering, it is the five deep pits dug out before to fill the explosives.

The interval of 20*20 meters between the pits is a relatively appropriate distance, and after this distance is poured, the erosion can be completed within an appropriate time.

Moreover, it is also convenient to collect the solution carrying uranium ions after completion.

After the preparatory work is done, Won won't take care of the rest, from diluting the solution to extracting and pouring, these tasks can be done very well by the X-1 industrial robot.

The sound of the water pump running rumbled, and the Leluo triangular aircraft acted as a power source, supplying the operation of industrial robots and water pumping equipment.

After looking at it for a while, Han Yuan confirmed that there was nothing wrong with it, and then returned to the aircraft.

This is the benefit of having a highly intelligent industrial robot. Before doing it, he could only handle it by himself.

Late at night, Wonwo sleeps in the aircraft.

In reality, Huaguo, Xijiang, not long after the anchor landed, a prospecting team came to the designated location based on the latitude and longitude information provided by the special operations team.

After more than ten hours, the prospecting team used the equipment in their hands to roughly confirm that there is indeed a uranium-thorium mine in this place, and it is also a world-class super-large uranium-thorium mine.

After preliminary confirmation by the exploration team, this uranium and thorium mine is a shallow mine, and its uranium ore is divided by conglomerate, and the area about [-] meters above the ground begins to have mining value.

According to the ten pits temporarily sampled, the average grade of uranium ore here has reached an astonishing 24.87%, which is far higher than the MacArthur River uranium mine, which is currently the world's number one.

The average grade of U16.36O[-] in the MacArthur River uranium mine is [-]%, which is [-] times the grade of common uranium mines.

Since its discovery, it has firmly occupied the title of the world's number one uranium mine with a value of more than 500 meters of gold per ton of uranium ore.

If it is the uranium mine in front of me, with its astonishing grade and the fact that it is extremely easy to mine and has almost no cost, the value of a ton of uranium ore rough may exceed [-] yuan, directly raising the upper limit of the world's uranium mines by several grades.

What is even more exciting is that the uranium mine located in Xijiang is not only of high grade, but also has quite high reserves.

According to the preliminary judgment, the uranium reserve of this uranium mine exceeds [-] tons. This is preliminary exploration, and the figure is not accurate.

After all, there is only less than a day, so it cannot be confirmed accurately.

However, based on this preliminary judgment, the estimated uranium reserves have already exceeded the [-]-ton uranium mine discovered in Inner Mongolia not long ago.

Although it is still inferior to the MacArthur River uranium mine in terms of reserves, this uranium mine is the largest among all uranium mines discovered in Huaguo.

The most important thing is that this is an ultra-shallow uranium mine. It only needs to peel off a layer of soil and conglomerate on the surface, and there are rich ore that can be mined underneath.

This is much better than the MacArthur River uranium mine. The average depth of the MacArthur River uranium mine is about 500 meters to 600 meters underground.

The mining difficulty and mining cost of this uranium mine are much lower than those of the MacArthur River uranium mine.

If all the uranium 235 in this uranium mine is extracted to make nuclear weapons, based on the calculation of [-] tons of uranium, more than [-] tons of high-concentration enriched uranium can be extracted.

Calculated according to the amount of 60kg of enriched uranium contained in the "little boy" dropped on the head of a small island country, 8333 tons of enriched uranium can produce [-] pieces.

而斯德哥尔摩国际和平研究所2021年1月的统计，米国的现有核弹头数量是5550枚，老毛子6255枚、华国350枚。

Of course, I don't know if this data is accurate.

After all, how can others easily know the number of nuclear weapons of a superpower?
However, it can be said that the discovery of the uranium mine in Xijiang has increased Huaguo's ability to 'self-protect' and 'peace' a little bit.

In the simulated space, after a night passed, Han Yuan woke up from the aircraft, washed up and walked out of the aircraft.

The rumble of the pump running outside still rang out.

But there are only six X-1 industrial robots working.

Han Yuan looked at it, and five of the six industrial robots looked after the five holes where the solution was poured, ensuring that the diluted solution pumped out by the water pump accurately entered the pit.

And the remaining one is diluting the solution proportionally.

Six industrial robots perfectly control the mining of uranium ore.

Won went up to check the working status and remaining power of these industrial robots, and found that the power of these working robots was above 80.00%.

Obviously, the power supply has been supplemented. After all, they have been working for about [-] hours. No matter how high the energy storage capacity of lithium-sulfur batteries is, it is impossible to support them to work all the time.

After checking the working conditions of the industrial robot, Han Yuan returned to the aircraft, turned on the display screen, called it, and a simple line drawing appeared on the screen.

(End of this chapter)