Breeder reactor by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
A nuclear reactor made to produce specific isotopes rather than just consume fissile material to produce electrical power. The most notably application being to produce Plutonium-239 for nuclear weapons from Uranium-238 being irradiated from Uranium-235-created fission.
Because you can generate plutonium-239 from uranium-238 in a breeder reactor, and then separate the plutonium-239 from the Uranium simply by using chemistry methods because you've created an element with different valence electrons.
Isn't it somewhat funny that it is easier to purify a synthetic element than a naturally occurring one?
Thorium-232 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
GPHS-RTG by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
GPHS-RTG diagram
. Source.
Figure 2.
Cassini probe's RTG before installation
. Source.
Polonium-209 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Polonium-208 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Plutonium-240 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
This isotope shows up as an inevitable contaminant in Plutonium-239 for nuclear weapons, because it emits neutrons too fast and makes it harder to assemble the critical mass without fizzle.
Wikipedia explains that Pu-240 is formed by Pu-239 Neutron capture:
About 62% to 73% of the time when 239Pu captures a neutron, it undergoes fission; the remainder of the time, it forms 240Pu.
so its presence is inevitable.
Plutonium-239 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
This is the isotope that is produced for nuclear weapons by irradiating Uranium-238 with a neutron.
Plutonium-240 is a contaminant.
Plutonium-238 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Strong alpha emitter. Can be used as an atomic battery.
Figure 1.
Plutonium-238-oxide pellet glowing under its own heat
. Source. Unlike for nuclear applications, we don't need the pure metal, so the oxide 238PuO2 is used instead as it is more chemically stable.
K-25 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Thermal neutron by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
These are neutrons that have reached the thermal equilibrium according to the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution after having bounced around many times without undergoing neutron capture.
Good fissile material is material that is able to absorb thermal neutrons and continue the reaction, because that's the type of neutron you end up getting the most of.
Neutron cross section by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Figure 1.
Uranium-235 neutron cross section as a function of neutron energy
. Source.
Figure 2.
Neutron cross section for various uranium isotopes
. Source.
Figure 3.
Neutron cross section of two isotopes of Boron as a function of neutron speed
. Source.
Gas centrifuge by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Gaseous diffusion by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
This isotope separation method was the first big successful method, having been used in the Manhattan Project, notably in the K-25 reactor.
This method was superseded by the more efficient gas centrifuges.
Figure 1.
Gaseous diffusion diagram
. Source.
Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16
Apparently there were biweekly reports, that were grouped and published biannually on January and July, each one with a sequential tome number.
For example, both Marie Curie's Polonium paper and Marie Curie's Radium paper were published in the second half of 1898 and fell in tome 127.
TODO how to download a PDF from? I can't even turn the pages...
Cobalt-60 by Ciro Santilli 37 Created 2024-08-14 Updated 2025-07-16

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact