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@REPLYADDR Jim Wilkins <muratlanne@gmail.com>
@REPLYTO 2:5075/128 Jim Wilkins
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"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message news:uc1v82$2bu6t$
1@dont-email.me...
There are a few snags here.
1) I doubt there is much in the way of nuclear fuel in the asteroid
belt, yes there will be iron and other heavy metals but finding enough
uranium, enriching it to a useful percentage of U-235 and the
fabricating and testing are tricky enough on earth.
2) The hard part is getting out of the gravity well of our planet.
From what we have learned from probes there are 3 basic types of asteroid.
a) Carbonaceous
b) Silicaceous
c) Metallic
The latter are rare and dont seem to contain much in the way of fissile
materials. If we are lucky they MAY have been separated out by orbital
dynamics but we simply dont know.
If you want a simple way to get to the belt try a light sail.
https://www.planetary.org/sci-tech/lightsail
------------------------------
The finding part isn`t that difficult in a vacuum because we have several
remote sensing techniques to detect elements on or near the surface while
orbiting or flying slowly past asteroids.
https://kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/primitive/presentations/blacksberg.pdf
A recovered sample can be analyzed with the hand-held instrument scrap metal
dealers use.
https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/elemental-analyzers/handheld-xr
f-spectrometers.html
The really difficult part is separating the 0.7% of uranium that`s useful
from the 99.3% that isn`t. Chemically they are identical so inefficient
physical processes that take advantage of the ~1% weight difference between
the isotopes must be used. That`s why Iran has been struggling so long to
acquire enough for a bomb.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/wh
at-is-uranium-how-does-it-work.aspx
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