Marie Curie into U235!

DMA

What if Marie Curie, along with her hubby Pierre, instead of concentrating on Radium, concentrated on U-235 in the late 1890s & into the early 1900s.

If they had, thus, made signifcant inroads into the energy properties, as well as the weapon potential, of U-235, what effects may have this had on the first half of the 20th Century, not to mention ever since?

Discuss.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

DMA said:
What if Marie Curie, along with her hubby Pierre, instead of concentrating on Radium, concentrated on U-235 in the late 1890s & into the early 1900s.

If they had, thus, made signifcant inroads into the energy properties, as well as the weapon potential, of U-235, what effects may have this had on the first half of the 20th Century, not to mention ever since?

Discuss.
Click to expand...

Errr... How? Isotope separation is really difficult. Chemical separation, relatively speaking, is trivial.
 

DMA

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Errr... How? Isotope separation is really difficult. Chemical separation, relatively speaking, is trivial.
Click to expand...


Believe it or not that is what the Curie's were able to do anyway in regards to Radium/Uranium.

To quote from Wiki

Radium (Latin radius, ray) was discovered by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898 in pitchblende from North Bohemia (area around Jáchymov). While studying pitchblende the Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material was still radioactive. They then separated out a radioactive mixture consisting mostly of barium which gave a brilliant green flame color and crimson carmine spectral lines which had never been documented before. In 1902 radium was isolated as a pure metal by Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the electrolysis of a pure radium chloride solution by using a mercury cathode and distilling in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas.
Click to expand...
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

DMA said:
Believe it or not that is what the Curie's were able to do anyway in regards to Radium/Uranium.

To quote from Wiki
Click to expand...

Ummm.... no, it isn't. Radium is a different ELEMENT, as evidenced by its different spectral lines. What the Curies did was incredible, in terms of separating out exceedingly rare ELEMENTs from tonnes of ore, but it was all chemical processes.

Most U235 separation relies on the differing mass of the two isotopes (in one way or another), as they are chemically essentially identical.
 

DMA

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Ummm.... no, it isn't. Radium is a different ELEMENT, as evidenced by its different spectral lines. What the Curies did was incredible, in terms of separating out exceedingly rare ELEMENTs from tonnes of ore, but it was all chemical processes.

Most U235 separation relies on the differing mass of the two isotopes (in one way or another), as they are chemically essentially identical.
Click to expand...


Well you'll have to go & edit the Wiki article then, because that's where I got the idea from
 

cerebus

DMA said:
Well you'll have to go & edit the Wiki article then, because that's where I got the idea from
Click to expand...


No the article is correct. Uranium is mildly radioactive natuarlly, but Curie already knew that. Radium was a new element and she was interested in it.

However the concept of isotopes of elements and what they mean was still being invented.

To get useful work (or an explosion) out of the element Uranium you have to increase the proportion of the more radioactive isotope (235) very significantly, What is left over is depleated uranium. Doing this is very difficult as they are very nearly identical in mass and are identical chemically.

Until the 1920's nobody could see any reason to make the effort or had the technology/engineering/money to try.
 

Nekromans

When I saw the title, I thought you meant have her build a nuclear submarine in a Second Reich Victory TL, designated U-235.
 
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