Chapter 1470 For Thermonuclear Weapons

Ten minutes later, the discussion moved back to Chang Haonan's office from the underground research center.

Only a few core participants were left.

As a doctoral student who has not yet graduated, Huang Zhitao is still most concerned about whether his experiment can continue.

Otherwise, if such a good start is delayed because of such a trivial matter, there will be no way to complain.

"Academician Chang, the fuel properties inferred from the operational data may still be inaccurate. Have you considered informing HFR of the current situation and asking them to replace a batch of nuclear fuel rods that meet the standards to avoid affecting subsequent experiments?"

This plan is certainly a solution to both the symptoms and the root cause, but it was unanimously rejected by Chang Haonan and Peng Juexian.

When the two of them shouted "No!" together, Huang Zhitao shuddered.

I, a doctoral student, was able to have my suggestions rejected by two academicians.

Life is getting better.

"Xiao Huang, you think too simply." Peng Juexian shook his head and said in a low voice, "The HFR fuel replacement process will take at least three months and cost several million euros, and we have to resubmit the safety review report... The Dutch may not be willing to cooperate, and our experimental progress will be completely disrupted."

"More importantly," Chang Haonan added, "Once we raise this question, it means we are telling the other party... no matter who they are, we have discovered the data anomaly. If they really did it on purpose, they will undoubtedly be more cautious next time."

Huang Zhitao still wanted to struggle, but facing the gazes of the two, he just didn't have the courage to speak.

Fortunately, Chang Haonan had been a doctoral student just a decade ago, so he knew what he wanted to say:

"Of course, the properties of this batch of fuel have been contaminated. It will not have much impact on the start-up test without an external neutron source, but the subsequent tritium addition part cannot be used so carelessly. Therefore, the top priority is to find out the background of this batch of fuel and see if we can clarify its properties in a targeted manner and try not to delay the subsequent testing process."

Peng Juexian has already begun to analyze the current situation:

"The nuclear fuel used by HFG is produced, transported and installed by the Russian Federation Nuclear Industry Group, but they are essentially just OEMs. The specific design and manufacturing parameters should all be provided by the European Nuclear Fuel Group (ENFG), which is the first party..."

"So, they all have a chance..." said another assistant.

"Perhaps the Russians are more likely to be involved?" Huang Zhitao speculated. "After all, ITER is led by Europeans. It doesn't make sense for them to destroy their own platform. The Russians have always wanted to dominate the international nuclear energy market. If they can destroy our experiment..."

Halfway through saying this, even he himself was at a loss for words.

"But Russia, like us, is a member of ITER. They have the theoretical basis and engineering data, but lack sufficient funds to conduct independent experiments. They have no motivation to create trouble." Peng Juexian shook his head. "If they destroy our test and HFR has problems as a result, it will not be good for them either."

The office fell silent again.

It was not until some time later that there was an unexpected knock on the door.

After opening the door, it was the lab's administrative assistant, Liu Chenchen.

There was really no room for advancement in this position, but fortunately all the staff at the Torch Laboratory were regular employees with good pay, so she just stayed there.

When coming up from the basement just now, Chang Haonan contacted the office and asked them to check the background of this ENFG.

Judging from what the other party has in his hand, there should be a result.

Sure enough, Liu Chenchen placed a few pages of still-hot printed paper in front of them:

"We found that ENFG and Westinghouse had a large number of patent exchanges and cross-shareholdings, and even more than one executive was introduced directly from Westinghouse. Of course, correspondingly, they also sent the same number of managers to Westinghouse."

Then he turned another page and pointed to a photo on it:

"In particular, the current CEO of ENFG was a senior vice president at Westinghouse three years ago, responsible for the 'Advanced Nuclear Fuel Technology' project."

"really."

Chang Haonan stared at the document and muttered:

In this world, if there is a country that is always stirring up trouble, stirring up trouble all over, and always doing nothing but benefiting itself... then most people would definitely think of the United States first.

"In other words, this batch of 'problematic fuel' was most likely inserted by the Americans through ENFG?"

Huang Zhitao said in shock.

"It's not necessarily stuffed in directly." Chang Haonan shook his head. "It's more likely that they used ENFG's technical route to tamper with the fuel formula, so that it has no problems in the normal operation mode, but once it enters our non-external source startup test, it will fail due to abnormal temperature feedback."

However, although this was true, the doubts that everyone had just had were still not resolved.

"But the Americans' controlled nuclear fusion research is still in its infancy, and it is meaningless for them to destroy the HFR experiment." Peng Juexian pondered for a moment, "Or to put it more bluntly, for any ITER member country, at least at this stage, the benefits of cooperation outweigh competition."

At this point, he changed his tone to a half-joking one and added:

“Unless they didn’t get the chance to test at HFR.”

This statement is undoubtedly veiledly directed at Japan.

Of course everyone knows that this is impossible.

The Japanese were completely excluded from the first round of ITER tests and had no conditions to conduct secret operations.

"Forget it, let's not mention this for now."

Chang Haonan felt that the atmosphere in the office was too heavy, so he simply changed the topic to a lighter one:

"The patent exchange between ENFG and Westinghouse last year included a patent for dispersed fuel, which is a type of nuclear fuel that is ... a uniform mixture of zirconium hydride and enriched uranium, and is inherently safe. It claims to have technology that can solve the life and mechanical performance problems caused by brittle zirconium hydride."

"From this, we can roughly infer the problems faced by HFR reactors. First, the hydrogen content of the fuel pellets is abnormal. Then the temperature rises, causing hydrogen atoms to diffuse to the grain boundaries. Then the neutron energy spectrum hardening intensifies the resonance absorption, and finally forms a negative feedback loop... In short, if the resonance absorption peak of hydrogen can be sampled and detected, then the results of the fuel property estimation can be narrowed down to an acceptable range for the experiment."

"Of course, the life of this batch of nuclear fuel will definitely be affected, but that is not a problem we need to consider. In any case, it will definitely not decay within half a year."

Hearing this, Huang Zhitao, who had been gloomy all the time, finally smiled for the first time in a few days.

……

After analyzing the situation for a while, Peng Juexian took the initiative to suggest leaving.

There was naturally no reason for Chang Haonan to stop him, so he prepared to stand up and see him off.

But when they reached the door, Peng Juexian deliberately left himself behind, then signaled the others to go downstairs first, and then closed the office door again.

Seeing this, Chang Haonan understood that the other party might have something that he only wanted to tell him, so he waved his hand to signal Liu Chenchen to leave.

"I have a more daring idea."

Chang Haonan did not respond, but just used his eyes to signal the other party to continue.

"If it was really done by the Americans, then what they really want to destroy is probably not our fusion research."

Although there were only two people left in the room, Peng Juexian deliberately lowered his voice:

"It's thermonuclear weapons."

This speculation was so explosive that Chang Haonan needed some time to buffer.

Although he had mentioned the idea of ​​having both nuclear and conventional missiles when he was describing the situation to his superiors, he had never actually been involved in the construction of a nuclear arsenal in his two lifetimes.

So for a while, I really ignored this direction.

"Is it related to tritium breeding technology?"

"Yes, and it is also related to you, Academician Chang."

At this point, Peng Juexian was actually interested in making a joke:

“What are Americans most worried about right now?”

He asked himself and answered:

"Our intercontinental ballistic missiles can already cover more than half of the enemy's homeland. They are the unprecedented gliding hypersonic weapons that we exhibited last month. Although they are only a tactical model, I think as long as we replace them with long-range missiles as the power stage, we can easily extend the range to the intercontinental level..."

Peng Juexian is not a missile system expert, and of course he does not know that increasing the range of a hypersonic missile is far from as simple as "changing the vehicle."

But the overall idea is indeed correct.

CASIC is indeed considering using the basic model of DF-31 as rocket power and combining it with a waverider glide warhead to increase the effective range to more than 14000 kilometers.

Except for parts of South America and Antarctica, most of the land on Earth will be within the strike range.

"In this case, if we can catch up with the performance of thermonuclear warheads and, of course, production capacity... we don't even have to catch up, even if we can reach half or two-thirds of the level of the United States and Russia, it will completely break the strategic balance advantage held by the United States!"