Why does a mountain of uranium not explode as bomb?

Answer 1

Your question is unclear and cannot be answered as written.

However depending on what you mean by go nuclear I might be able to offer some possible answers:

• If by go nuclear you mean undergo a nuclear explosion, the answer is an unequivocal NO.
• If by go nuclear you mean go critical, the answer it yes, any operating nuclear reactor is always exactly critical all the time it is operating. If it was subcritical it would shut itself down, if it was supercritical safety systems would return it to exactly critical or if they failed it would meltdown.

All of the explosions that have occurred at reactors have been either:

1. Steam explosions
2. Hydrogen explosions

Answer 2

Mainly because the nuclear fuel will not make an explosion, whatever you do with it. The fuel used in PWR and BWR is uranium enriched to about 4-5 percent U-235, whereas a nuclear weapon needs nearly pure U-235 to make an effective explosion. In addition the fuel in a reactor is not assembled into a single mass, it is spread out into a matrix arrangement with spaces for the moderator/coolant between fuel rods, so it could never form a supercritical single shape as required for a weapon.

Answer 3

In short: no.

By far the biggest explosion danger in a nuclear reactor is chemical. During the Three Mile Island incident, one of the major concerns was that a hydrogen bubble which had formed in the reactor from the reaction of very hot water with the metals in the reactor core would ignite and explode. This, however, would be an ordinary chemical explosion, not an atomic explosion.

One of the big problems faced by the designers of the first atomic bombs was how to assemble a supercritical mass quickly enough to keep it from "fizzling" by starting to go off prematurely, which would have simply scattered the fissile material without ever amassing enough together for the really big explosion they were hoping for. The fuel in a reactor core is not "concentrated" enough for an atomic explosion to happen.

Answer 4

Because the fuel rods are held apart from each other, it is not possible to form a small critical mass as in a nuclear weapon, and apart from that the fuel is low enrichment, only 4 to 5 percent U-235, whereas a nuclear weapon needs nearly pure U-235. Chernobyl was a steam explosion, not a nuclear one, though of course the nuclear reactor provided the energy needed.

Answer 5

Because most power reactors use a moderator to slow neutrons to thermal energies, they cannot go prompt-critical, which is required for a bomb. The reaction rate of the chain reaction is about 1000 times too slow.

Answer 6

All the energy is slowly released in a controlled manner rather than all the energy released at once making a blast and an explosion.

Answer 7

The chain reaction is kept under control using neutron absorbers such as boron or cadmium arrestors.

Answer 8

Blah blah blah

Answer 9

fission