If you think that gold and platinum are the most valuable metals in the world, then you are wrong. Comparing with some artificially produced metals, the price of gold can be compared with the cost of rust on an old piece of corrugated iron. Can you imagine the price of 27 million US dollars per one gram of the substance? It is the real price of radioactive element called Californium - 252. Only antimatter is more expensive, but it is the most expensive substance in the world (about 60 trillion dollars per gram of antihydrogen).
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Now there is only 8 grams of Californium-252 in the world and 40 milligrams is produced annual. And there are only two places in the world where it is regularly produced: at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US and ... Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region.
Do you want to know how almost the most expensive material in the world is produced and what is it made for?
Dimitrovgrad
At 80 kilometers from Ulyanovsk on the Cheremshan River, there is the city of Dimitrovgrad with a population of about 100000 people. Its main enterprise - the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (RIAR), which was established in 1956 because of Kurchatov. Originally it was an experimental station for nuclear reactors tests, but now the variety of activities has expanded. Now RIAR tests various materials to explore how they behave in conditions of prolonged radiation, create radionuclide sources and preparations, which are used in medicine and science, solve technical issues of ecologically clear technologies and do a lot of scientific activity. The RIAR employs approximately 3,500 employees and have got 6 reactors.
Shine but don’t heat
None of the six reactors are used as an energy source for heating of the city - you won’t see the giant installations for thousands of MW. The main task of these "little ones" - to create maximum neutron flux density, which the scientists of the institute use to bombard various targets, creating creating things that don’t exist in nature. Reactors of RIAR operate under the "10/10" scheme - ten days of working and 10 days of vacation, prevention and refueling. In this mode it is simply impossible to use it for water heating. And the maximum flow temperature is only 98 C, water is cooled rapidly in small towers and goes in the circle.
The most powerful
One of the 6 reactors is really loved by scientists of RIAR. It is also the first one. And it is the most powerful, which gave it a name - MP. In 1961 it was the MP-1, with a capacity of 50 MW, in 1965 after the upgrade, it became the MP-2, in 1992 – MP-3, which would work until 2017. It is a unique reactor and it is the only one in the world. It is unique because of a very high neutron flux density, which it is able to create. Neutrons themselves are the main products of RIAR. With the help of neutrons a lot of problems like studying of materials and the creation of useful isotopes can be solved. And even to make the dream of medieval alchemists come true - to turn plumbum into gold (in theory).
Without going into details, the process is very simple – you take one substance and fire it with neutrons. Thus, for example, with neutron nuclear fragmentation of the uranium it is possible to obtain lighter elements like: iodine, strontium, molybdenum, Xenon, and others.
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