American plutonium production by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html mentions:
The United States Government has used 14 plutonium production reactors at the Hanford and Savannah River sites to produce plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and DOE research and development programs. From 1944 to 1994, these reactors produced 103.4 metric tons of plutonium; 67.4 MT at Hanford, and 36.1 at Savannah River.
That site also contains a good summary of the closed shutdown reactors in each site. These are publicly disclosed e.g. at: www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/ProjectsFacilities
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKhz7BPBLY mentions that before they stopped production at the end of the Cold War, Hanford site produced 2/3 of the total American stockpile, and Savannah River site produced 1/3.
TODO is there any information available on active breeder reactors? Hanford apparently shutdown.
Uraninite by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
This is the mineral that Pierre and Marie Curie used to discover polonium and radium.
Video 1.
The Most Dangerous Rock in the World by Welch Labs
. Source. OK, the title is quite minimalistic, he goes on to talk about the full early history of nuclear fission!
Uranium oxide by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Edge of Darkness by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Video 1.
Plutonium for self-respect scene from the 1987 film Edge of Darkness
. Source.
Video 2.
The 50 Greatest Television Dramas: Edge of Darkness
. Source.
Video 3.
Three wonderful scenes from the 1987 film Edge of Darkness
. Source.
PUREX by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Video 1.
Plutonium Metal Preparation by Los Alamos National Laboratory
. Source. Describes conversion from Plutonium nitrate to a plutonium metal slab, which is then sent to final pit.
Operating system concept by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
MP3 by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
GCHQ by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Fun fact: you can see they "No photography" signs on GCHQ's gates from Google Street View, but super low resolution, making them unreadable. They must have made a deal: Google gives its Street View data with uncensored plate numbers/faces, and GCGQ allows them to film in front of their building at low resolution! The sign actually shows up on their first Instagram post when they created one in 2018 www.gchq.gov.uk/news/gchq-joins-instagram | inews.co.uk/news/uk/gchq-instagram-puzzles-photography-hobbies-216444 Just passing in front of the damn place with Google Maps on must increase your "interest score"!
Video by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Photography by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Pit (nuclear weapon) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Production is fully concentrated at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States as of 2020. TODO was it ever made anywhere else?
Most British universities are registered as charities by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
No, they are basically not-for-profits, or more precisely in british legal terms, "charities". By taking government funding (directly or indirectly through subsiding enrolment fees?), they have to follow some government rules, and all major ones do it seems: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/49187/in-what-sense-are-uk-universities-public/49188
A similar confusing naming pattern appears to apply to Public school.
In the University of Cambridge for example, all MA degree holders or higher appear to have some voting power: www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/how-the-university-and-colleges-work/governance (archive)
This adds an extra layer of difficulty for the average taxpayer to make changes to university policy, e.g. making universities publish all material with Creative Commons licenses. At most, voters could require this indirectly through the government funding requisites. It is a mess.
Not even the Open University seems to be very open!
Ciro Santilli once attended a round table in the early 2020s where a University of Oxford official from the IP licensing department. The University of Oxford took a 20% equity on spin-off companies, not an uncommon University IP ownership policy at the time. At one point, the officer clearly justified this along the following very official sounding lines (paraphrased):
The university is a charity with the goal of promoting education and research. All money obtained is reinvested in furthering education and research.
While noble sounding, this immediately reminded Ciro of instrumental convergence, in the field of AGI philosophy. Or in other words, of course the best approach to maximize education and research outcomes of society is to first take over the world, and then implement those goals from there! See also Why Not Just: Think of AGI Like a Corporation? by Robert Miles (2018)
Notably, the University of Oxford was extremely protective of its learning material at that time, which was highly paywalled behind university logins, presumably with the rationale of having unique learning materials to enroll more paying undergrads. How can giving out free information to all not be the optimal way to "promoting education and research" is very hard to envision.
Bibliography:
Braindumper by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Uranium compound by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Plutonium extraction from Uranium by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Weapons-grade nuclear material by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
For nuclear weapons you need a certain level of isotope purity of either plutonium-239 or uranium-235.
And the easiest way by far to achieve this purity is to produce plutonium-239 in a breeder reactor, which allows you to get it out with much cheaper chemical processes rather than costly isotope separation methods.
fissilematerials.org/ summarizes stockpiles and production status. 20224 Archive.
Fission nuclear fuel by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Semi-empirical mass formula by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Image by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created

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