What two solid isotopes are important for producing fission weapons?

Question

How are they produced?

Answer 1

U-235, present as 0.7% of natural uranium. Can be separated from natural uranium by several processes, all of them difficult and expensive. Do Google for gaseous diffusion, centrifuge, electromagnetic separation.
Pu-239, made from U-238 by irradiation with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. U-238 is changed into U-239, which decays rather quickly (with the emission of two beta particles) into Pu-239. Pu-239 is semi-stable; it decays into U-235 by emitting an alpha particle.

Answer 2

uranium has 2 commonly mentioned isotopes, u-238 and u-235. unfortunately, for producers of nukes, u-235 is the one suitable to use in fission, and less than 1 percent of all the uranium on the planet is u-235. there is also u-233 which has nice properties when incorporated with a fusion process, but the original isotope was u-235. im not sure of the plutonium isotope, but if you look up anything about plutonium, its bound to give you the isotope used for fission.

Answer 3

The stock answer is Uranium Isotope 235 (U235) and Plutonium Isotope 239 (Pu239) but you don't use them together. You choose either one as your fissile material. But if you want your bomb to be really effective, you are going to want another isotope: Uranium Isotope 238 (U238). And you are going to want it packed all around your choice of fissile material. U238 doesn't blow up, but because of its density, it helps hold the fissile material together longer so you get a better yield or "bang for the buck."

Now if you are asking this question in the context of what's happening in North Korea and Iran, here's the lowdown. You need a nuclear reactor to get yourself some Pu239. Reactors are hard to hide. But the North Korean government is fearless so it uses its reactors to generate Pu239 as its fissile material of choice.

Iran would like to use Pu239 too, but it rightly suspects that Israeli warplanes will bomb it into the ground if it tries, so instead it's choice is Uranium Isotope 235. To make that you have to "enrich" or extract U235 and this process is a lot easier to hide underground.

It takes three things to make a fissile bomb: 1) The fissile material; 2) putting it all together in such a way that it blows up and; 3) not getting yourself killed doing it. Step number 1 is very hard but once you have it the other two are pretty easy.

Thanks for asking.

Answer 4

Two isotopes? Isotopes of what? Do you know what an isotopes is? Hydrogen has three. The difference is in the number of nuetrons each isotope has, but they all have the same number of protons.

To make a nuclear weapon as we know, the basic materials needed are either uranium or plutonium. Is that what your looking for? They use uranium oxide, but I'm not to knowledgable about making nuclear weapons as I'm not a nuclear scientist.

Answer 5

You won't like this answer, but you should do your own work when writing papers for school. The entire point of such papers is to get you into the habit of finding and evaluating information for yourself instead of begging it from other people and merely taking their word for it.

Answer 6

I'm with Bryan--Knowing the answer isn't as important as knowing how to find it.

I'll give you a little hint--searching under "atomic" might yield more bang than searching under "nuclear"

(No pun intended)