Chapter 1003 - New Progress (1/2)

Chapter 1003: New Progress

Translator: TransN Editor: TransN

“Why do you look so serious?” Nightingale broke into a smile. “I’ll believe anything you say, but you ought to give me some time to absorb the information. Nobody would believe this tiny little thing can decimate thousands of demons, especially when they saw the actual substance extracted by Lucia.”

“Do I?” Roland stroked his cheeks. Perhaps he became nervous when he realized that this was a race against time that would determine the very survival of humanity. “You’re right though. I can hardly believe in something until I’ve seen it myself.”

Roland turned around and held the tiny “stone fragment” in his hand.

This would be the starting point of harnessing the power of the atom — purified uranium.

It was hard to convince people that the little stone could produce “something as glorious as the sun”. The silver-white surface of the uranium sample had lost its shine due to oxidation. It felt cold to the touch and seemed to have nothing to do with heat or the sun. But Roland knew it would produce amazing results under the right conditions.

To collect uranium, Lucia and Spear had spent nearly a week at the North Slope Mine extracting uranium from the crushed granite. Because of this, the Countess had complained quite a bit. She thought it was inappropriate to subject a lady to such heavy labor. As a compensation, she took five apprentices from Neverwinter’s city hall for her own region’s city hall.

And in the end, they had only got this tiny piece.

Compared to the original samples, this thumb-sized metal piece had a purity of over 90% and consisted of two layers. One layer was Uranium-235 and the other Uranium-238, in a ratio of 1 to 99. This was also the ratio commonly existing in nature.

In other words, the uranium on the surface of the stone, as thin as it was, could be used to produce a “weapon”.

As a stable element, both uranium-238 and uranium-235 had a half-life of 10 billion years. Uranium-238 was the predominant isotope but had little practical use, whereas uranium-235 could be used for creating nuclear weapons. Because of their extreme low radioactivity, the alpha particles emitted by uranium radionuclides during their decay could only travel a few dozen microns, not even far enough to penetrate the epidermis of a person’s skin. Therefore, the stone would not cause radiation poisoning even if one held it in his hand.

But this did not mean that uranium with a high concentration was absolutely safe.

The alpha particles produced during the decay were highly toxic. Once they entered the body through contaminated food, it could be disastrous.

Due to this, Roland had asked Soraya to coat the “stone fragment” with a transparent film, not only to prevent it from further oxidating, but also to protect people from the radiation.

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Roland had mixed feelings about the stone in his hand. Uranium, which contained so much potential power, lay innocently in his hand, looking almost different than iron. No wonder Pasha and the other witches didn’t believe him.

Now that he had made it this far, the next thing he needed to do was to collect the raw materials for the “Resplendent Radiation” Project.

Azima’s discovery of low purity uranium through a high purity sample told Roland that he could use the current sample to find more uranium mines. Although Roland could ask Lucia to extract uranium at a mining site and thus obtain sufficient uranium-235, such an arrangement would sabotage his initial plan of conducting multiple projects simultaneously.

Because Lucia also played an irreplaceable role in the smelting industry.

Besides, it was impossible to produce an atom bomb with only uranium. To create atomic weapons, Roland had to utilize a very rare element which was usually found with uranium, but in far smaller amounts. Therefore, even though Lucia could help him extract uranium, he still needed a large amount of the raw ore before he could build a bomb.

For that, Azima was the key.