URANIUM EXPLOSIVES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1940, Page 6

URANIUM EXPLOSIVES

GREATER THAN T.N.T. Uranium explosives, sought by military leaders throughout the world, have at last been made, tested and proved in the United States, and authority for this statement is Dr. Artur W. Sahudopvsky, a former resident of Brussels, Belgium, who is now in Burbank, California. The new explosive, which taps some of the enormous forces locked up in the nuclei of uranium atoms, can be so treated that it can be used as a source of power, he asserts. Recent tests are reported to indicate that this explosive, “Blue-RPX,” is almost 100 times more potent than TNT. But the investigators, “to be on the safe side,” content themselves with claiming their product is at least 15 times more powerful than TNT’. The crucial experiments, it was explained, were conducted in a remote spot by three physicists: Dr. Noah Tahl Ginsberg, director of research for the ST Explosives Corporation; Dr. Shaudopvsky, who came to California from Wilmington, Delaware; and Wendell Zimmerman, formerly associated with the Hercules Powder Company. Both, the high-test dynamite and the Blue-RPX employed in the tests were exploded on top of half-inch armoui plates. It was found, according to the group’s spokesman, that whereas 1500 grams of high-power dynamite did 868 foot-pounds of work, the blast fiom only 100 grams of the explosive containing 85 per cent of uranium did 4270 foot-pounds of work. And only iho downward force of the explosive was “hough the amount of the BlueRPX detonated was so small, Di. Shaudopvsky said, “the resultant air blast shook a tower situated more than - mile away. We cannot, ot course, give any details regarding the rather simple apparatus that has been developed for detonating the uranium explosive. Il is an absolutely inert and fairly dense substance. It. cannot be oxrloded by fire or by jarring, although wetting spoils the effect When Blue-RPX is exploded, extremely high temperatures are created. •■ln warfare, the explosive would be placed in shells and other projectiles. There appear to be no theoretical reasons why. with the extension of our technique, Blue-RPX cannot be made least 237 times as poweiful as TNT, and even that is by no means the extreme limit possible. The fiss.on (spitng) of a given weight of uranium lives more than 31.000,000 times as giv i, enbrgv as the detonation ol the ot TNT. However, the emciencies in our experiments are extreme'y small in that only one-mil-ionUi of the total weight ot uranium nuclei can be exploded by the piesent technique.” . Ur shaudopvsky is convinced that , ' ‘h')t a few pounds of exploding uranium might wipe an entire city off the map are completely unfounded. “Th" theoretical strength of an explosive.” he said, “does not give a direct idea of its destructive ability.”