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that's a stainless steel container that
has plutonium oxide so hopefully that
stuff will see its way onto some
spacecraft in the mid 2020 timeframe
Brady has been to really amazing land
where they're synthesizing plutonium and
they're making the plutonium to power
spacecraft spacecraft that go to really
distant places far too far from the Sun
to use solar cells so they need to use
plutonium-238 which can generate heat
through its radioactive decay and power
the spacecraft the plutonium is made
from neptunium the technical problem
that has to be solved is that the
neptunium is supplied to the Oakridge
lab as a solution okay so this is where
we convert the neptunium liquid solution
it's in a nitric acid solution and we
convert it to a solid that's low
concentration of the neptunium in that
it gets to be a really really dark green
whenever it's very concentrated we'll
put it in to this unit pump it through
it essentially a rotary kiln that's in
the other glovebox on the other side and
that converts the Neptunian liquid
solution to an oxide powder this is the
automated pellet press right here it's
gonna first clean this dye out has to be
really really clean before we use it now
it gets a little bit of lubricant and
they'll come over and they'll sit in the
center of the glovebox waiting for that
solution to dry so it's just gonna sit
there for about 45 seconds or so
there you go sets the funnel down I'm
just going to go pick up a vial so
what's the pin the boat picked up
that's neptunium oxide mixed with
aluminum powder now it takes off the cap
now it's going to dump down the powder
into the funnel
now it's gonna replace the cap on the
vial and in a second it'll take the vial
back and put it back in into the
position that it pulled it out of you
know occasionally there's a little bit
of powder that's left in the top of the
funnel so it's going to pick up a little
tool and brush the powder into the guy
that fat part of the unit is what we
call the die and then the punch is on
top and you'll see it put it punch into
place shortly it's gonna come over and
gets rid of the funnel first punch is
gonna go sit inside now it's gonna pick
up the whole human and go put it
underneath the press and now start
pressing and that'll start the same
operation again for another die in punch
set when you see here looking at this
powder and what's being done here and
knowing that some of this stuff's gonna
end up in space is that pretty cool it's
pretty cool yeah it's pretty cool it's
pretty cool to be able to be part of the
space program and be able to be
contributing material and knowing that
this material will be used for decades
to come the automated process almost
seems very human doesn't it like giving
something a little shake and a little
tap and the little habits that one might
do in a lab explaining well I think the
reason why the robot has been made to
mimic a human is because we know what a
human would do and we know what works if
you were trying to do some really
sophisticated new process you'd have to
do endless experiments to see whether it
works or not but we know that a little
brush of the funnel or tap is going to
work so it's easier to automate that
than to reinvent some new process so we
get a 52 pressed pellets and it's in a
little
transfer device we call a boat and that
boat comes over and it sits in the
center of this unit lay the extra
pillows those are actual pellets that's
got the Neptunia minute we've got four
lasers that actually measure diameter
and two different points on the pellet
now it's just searching for the center
of that pellet in just a vacuum device
to pick that up
it's measure the diameters now it goes
sets it down now it's going to measure
the length yep it's been approved so now
it puts it into that cassette the
pellets get put down into these little
holes and there's 53 holes around the
perimeter on both the inside the outside
that holds enough pellets for one target
we unload those next door and we just
drop the pellets down into the target
that's the whole process of building a
target so for us the big deal with that
we have here is the fact we're going
from making about 40 to 50 targets a
year to making it at least 200 a year
and in it and then eventually we'll get
another line on the other side of the
room and we'll be making around 400
targets a year in order to make the
production we need for four to supply
NASA they want more and more and
actually we think that going into the
latter part of the next decade will
probably yes to increase our production
but that's something the way we talk to
NASA about on a routine basis so it's
it's a it's a program well you got a
plan for the next 10 years you can't
just plan what so you're gonna do
tomorrow because by that time it's too
late you can't do anything about it
okay now we're going to what we call is
the control room this is where we have
heavenly shield and hot cells and that's
how we work on the irradiated target
safely so that we can simply make the
plutonium and give it again give it some
NASA after your aluminium and Neptunian
oxide spends its 50 days baking in
neutrons you've made a whole bunch of
new plutonium yes but you've also made a
lot of other stuff we don't want yeah a
lot of fission products and this is
where you do the chemistry yeah this is
where we do the chemistry the radiation
dose is just too high to handle in
anything but a heavily shielded not cell
this is four and a half feet of
shielding it's a combination of lead
glass and mineral oil lead glass to
shield from the gammas intense gamma
source and the mineral oil is used to
shield for neutrons this oil veil oh
yeah yeah we know like yeah that's
liquid yeah so unless I punched a hole
in that which I can't do a whole bunch
of oil oil would come out yeah yeah all
this equipment in here is used for the
processing chemical processing we have a
dissolve or the top of it is in the
floor of that cubicle and you see all
the pipes coming off of it so that's
what we call the solver there's actually
a an opening that's about say four to
five inches in diameter that we take our
targets and those are lowered into the
dissolver we'll do about 20 or 30
targets at a time and dissolve the
aluminum so using a sodium hydroxide
solution and then once we dissolved all
the aluminum we decant that get rid of
all the liquid waste and then we come
back and hit the actinides with
concentrated nitric acid concentrated
nitric acid will dissolve the actinides
and that allows us to start doing the
chemical processing to separate the
plutonium and the neptunium from the
fission products have we got some
targets in there that we could take a
look at yeah put some these guys do this
yeah so what we've got over there is
some targets that we use during our
experimental program that's an actual
target that we use if we were planning
and processing it we'd cut off the top
and the bottom because the top four
inches and the bottom four inches are
just aluminum and what we want is the
neptunium oxide and plutonium oxide
that's in the center of that target so
we'd actually cut off the top and bottom
and then put about 20 to 30 targets
inside the dissolver and then pump the
liquid sodium hydroxide in to start the
dissolution process so each one of those
targets is going to give us just under
four grams of plutonium oxide as the
product we have to run through around
400 of those a year in order to make
enough material one thing that's kind of
cool about the Neptune plutonium is
they'll turn certain colors so if you
see a color exiting - in the right way
you're pretty confident that's working
right so if using dark green going out
your Neptune is going out if you see
kind of a purplish or magenta color
coming this other way you got your
plutonium so it's you can visually kind
of see what's going on which is kind of
cool then we have a lot of ways we
actually measure those concentrations to
get very precise results what do you
think when you see these people that
have to work with something that's just
so dangerous like does it give you
chills well I find it exciting of course
although the material is dangerous it's
so well protected or they well protected
from them it isn't dangerous but you
always wonder what would go wrong and I
think it's a really good lesson to us
chemists about how you can do really
quite dangerous experiments if you take
the right precautions and have the right
equipment accidents happen in chemistry
when you use the wrong equipment or you
don't take precautions can you run the
arms bob or are you given I have no did
you use to do it was it ever never never
tried I my first chemistry experiment in
a lab I we were
a very complex separation and I had it
in a little bottle and then as I was
moving around that dumped the bottle on
the ground and had to try to sweep it
all up and I didn't get a very high
grade on that test that experiment no
that was not yeah I leave it to the
experts yeah
can't believe have like dead gentle you
can be with that thing it's a stainless
steel container that has plutonium oxide
made in what we call our campaign 3
which we did last spring and so this
material is going to be held in self
until we get the capability to be able
to ship it out to Los Alamos
so hopefully that stuff will see its way
onto some spacecraft in the mid 2020
timeframe I really liked how our guide
was so excited and pleased that he was
participating will be it indirectly in
the space mission and I think it really
demonstrates how even in really weird
technological events like spacecraft
going to Pluto
underneath and backing it all is a
chemist yeah this video was supported by
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I've been really impressed by just how
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sure they have some templates to get you
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there's no detail you can't fine tune
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Wix for supporting this episode and we
convert about 10% of that neptunium to
37 to plutonium-238