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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

> Trucks carrying almost 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium had just left a nuclear facility

I see a small problem with this statement, and with the picture at the beginning of the article.

Uranium is dense: 19.1 g/cm3. Enriched Uranium has a similar density, within a +/- 2% from "normal" Uranium.

It means that a cube of 600kg of enriched Uranium would be approx. 31cm x 31cm x 31cm. You don't need "trucks" for that.

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Hmm. I wonder if there’s any downside to storing too much enriched uranium in a single solid cube.

I cannot think of anything supercritical...

You wouldn't want to transport it as a solid cube, it needs to be spread out to avoid forming a critical mass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

The article starts with the point that these were pellets, presumably each packaged safely on its own.

In addition to all the other comments explaining why this would be a bad idea, this also misses a core point, uranium is rarely if ever transported in atomic form. What's usually transported is uranium hexafluoride (UF6) which has low levels of radioactivity.

Except that these seem to have been finished fuel pellets for the Alpha subs, subs with very hot lead-cooled reactors.

have you taken into account the box to keep it safe to handle?

... and the shielding to keep you safe from it and the fact that you need to package it into smaller chunks to prevent criticality, etc.

…and back to the mere weight and density. Yeah, it’ll fit in the back of your hatchback, but after dragging the rear for a few minutes, one good bump might punch it right through the floor.

Presumably, you'd need to store it in something, and have adequate protection against the radioactivity. I'm also reasonably convinced that storing highly dense (and volatile?) radioactive material as a condensed cube is a bad idea in many respects.

I want to print this out and frame it

This is hilarious

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