[FirstClassSkeptic]

Why should I believe Uranium exists? I have never seen any.

[rerevisionist]

Why should I believe Uranium exists? I have never seen any.

Without addressing voerioc, and looking only at this question, the periodic table of the elements developed from something like the mid-19th century and systematised atomic weights, and the less predictable atomic weights. There were something like competitions to discover new elements, with Scheele the winner - though most of his discoveries were 'rare earth' elements, which exist in Sweden in some quantity. The periodic table allowed predictions of the properties of elements. So personally I'm happy about uranium. Moreover chemical analysis techniques improved; I'm confident that the greenish uranyl acetate is a compound of uranium dissolved in water, and that ores containing uranium do contain it. And atomic weights are more or less measurable by mass spectrometry, so heavy elements were confidently known.. All this was possible by 1940.

However,
[1] Maybe 'depleted uranium' is a scam. I suspect 'cactusneedles' meant that 'depleted uranium' is in fact just uranium, that has been through the pretence of use in nuclear power.
[2] Doubts must increase with the 'transuranic' elements. Some of these (from memory) are reported to exist only for microseconds, and to be made only in microgram quantities. It's hard to see how such an element could be confidently said to exist. I suspect these, or some of these, were just made up, or possibly a product of wishful thinking, since results were wanted and prestige both of labs, and individuals, and countries too, had to be maintained.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Why should I believe Uranium exists? I have never seen any.

Without addressing voerioc, and looking only at this question, the periodic table of the elements developed from something like the mid-19th century and systematised atomic weights, and the less predictable atomic weights. There were something like competitions to discover new elements, with Scheele the winner -

That's very convincing to a chemist whose training has been structured around the periodic table. But I'm not a chemist.

[rerevisionist]

@ FCS -- Well, the point I was getting at is there are (or seem to be) a whole set of people who have to agree. Mineralogists study the crystal structures of minerals, and also chemically analyse them. Any new mineral has to fit in with the patterns. Analytic chemists used to perform reactions intended to identify specific ions or e.g. glucose of whatever. The physicists who design mass spectrometers (which separate out compounds, charge them, accelerate them, and find where they end up subjected to a field - the further the heavier) give results which are consistent over the periodic table. When a new element is isolated, its properties (melting point etc, appearance, density, allotropes) and chemistry (e.g. dissolving in some acids, maybe reacting with air) and biology (e.g. poisonous) were investigated and compared with esti8mates. Minerals engineers work out the properties of ores, and extraction processes are worked out.

I think these things are fairly standard, and fairly cheap. It's when very expensive equipment is used, or there's some secrecy, that it gets problematical. In biology, in my opinion, following some others, electron microscopy produces artefacts. But if electron microscopes had cost as little as cheap optical ones, I don't think the errors could have persisted. Or 'going to the moon' - if anyone could go into space, they'd soon, presumably, find moon journeys impossible. In nuclear weapons, there was supposed to be separation of U235 and U238 hexafluoride gases - this is very dangerous and expensive, and therefore an ideal bottleneck.

After looking at assorted revisionist topics, i.m.h.o. there is always some sort of information bottleneck which makes investigation difficult. For example, remains of German camps behind the iron curtain were kept from any investigators. Virology is made highly uncertain because the things are only detectable by indirect methods; even if these were dirt cheap, there are still interpretation problems.

There must be some sort of hierarchy I think, of what's true shading off into what is uncertain. I'm assuming the senses are reliable, though scientific method is needed.

I'm not sceptical of the existence of uranium, but I am sceptical of its alleged properties. However if someone like you doesn't accept all this - and I haven't seen any uranium, either, ever - I can’t see any alternative but go through the evidence step by step. Starting in practice I suppose with whatever is likely to be most convincing.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

@ FCS -- Well, the point I was getting at is there are (or seem to be) a whole set of people who have to agree. Mineralogists study the crystal structures of minerals, and also chemically analyse them. Any new mineral has to fit in with the patterns. Analytic chemists used to perform reactions intended to identify specific ions or e.g. glucose of whatever. The physicists who design mass spectrometers (which separate out compounds, charge them, accelerate them, and find where they end up subjected to a field - the further the heavier) give results which are consistent over the periodic table. When a new element is isolated, its properties (melting point etc, appearance, density, allotropes) and chemistry (e.g. dissolving in some acids, maybe reacting with air) and biology (e.g. poisonous) were investigated and compared with esti8mates. Minerals engineers work out the properties of ores, and extraction processes are worked out.

Well, the point I am making is that I have to trust the general consensus of all of these experts, and not even experts I know firsthand, but only ones I read about in books. I have never seen uranium myself, and I have never met someone who has.

[mooninquirer]

@ FirstClassSkeptic ----- not having seen something isn't good enough to conclude that it does not exist ---- you also need motivation for the lie to be told, and the placement of certain people at critical junctures where a LIMITED and restricted amount of information is available. In the case of nuke bombs, there is a very obvious and powerful motivation for this bluffing, and Jews have permeated all aspects of the nuke bomb development from day one.

I personally see no motivation for the Jews to lie about nuke power plants ---- it gives them NO military power, it cannot be used as an excuse for war, and the Jews would have no NEED to use it as a money making scam, because they could much more easily, and much more safely ( i.e., they would not have to risk getting exposed ) just get "free loans" in which they have to pay back neither the interest, nor the principal.

[mooninquirer]

@ voeric ---- it is NOT just my idea that uranium would not be consumed in anything like in a nuclear reactor, unless there is a moderator to slow down the fast neutrons. This is well accepted. I even gave an example of a naturally occurring nuclear reactor, that had water as a moderator. What is not well accepted, of course, is that nuke bombs do not explode.

A nuclear reaction with uranium at least is just NOT going to take place on its own accord. The slow neutron vs fast neutron problem, with slow neutrons being practically required for the fissioning of U 235 is very well established in the history of science, and it presents a problem for propagandists of nuke bombs ( it is said that slow neutrons have a very large capture cross section, as opposed to fast neutrons, which are MUCH harder for nuclei to capture ). Plutonium was discovered DURING the Manhattan Project, so they might have lied from day one, but the claim is that plutonium will ALSO fission equally well with fast neutrons. They couldn't just expunge Enrico Fermi's Nobel Prize citation, and expunge all copies of it around the globe, so they were stuck with the fact that slow neutrons, and not fast neutrons, will far more likely cause the fissioning of U 235.

The uranium must be slowly consumed in a nuclear reactor, because if the reaction went too fast, then too much heat would be created, and the fuel rods would melt. This may be a great or a small disaster, but most importantly, the meltdown would in and of itself HALT the reaction, because then the uranium fuel would not have the required shape and spacing for a critical mass. Any residual fissions would just throw neutrons away into the surrounding space and matter, without those neutrons having a chance of hitting another U 235 nucleus.

Let's forget about the fast neutron / slow neutron problem, and assume U 235 fissioned just as well with fast neutrons as with slow neutrons ( orthodox nuclear physics claims this to be true for plutonium ). In a nuclear bomb, the nuclear material are kept separated from each other and and NOT a critical mass, before the bomb detonates. In a nuclear reactor, the fuel rods are brought together close enough that they ARE a critical mass. There is also an neutron source used to start a nuclear reactor. A neutron source is often radium covered by beryllium. Also, in a nuclear reactor, there are CONTROL RODS, usually made of cadmium or boron, whose nuclei have a great appetite for absorbing neutrons, to slow down the reaction. A reaction can be slowed down by withdrawing fuel rods from the core, OR by inserting more control rods into the core. You MUST have that critical mass in order for a nuclear chain reaction to take place.

Isotopes of uranium DO undergo nuclear decay, but this is a spontaneous process, and NOT the result of the uranium nucleus having JUST absorbed a neutron, which is what happens in a chain reaction, in a reactor, or in a bomb. These decays without a chain reaction would take eons for the uranium to be consumed. But there is an isotope of plutonium with a short half life, in the thousands of years.

My contention is that the nuclear chain reaction in what is purported to be a bomb would just cause it to get very hot. It would then melt, and would no longer have the required critical mass, which requires a mass of nuclear material to be close together.

In summary, I am not basing anything upon nuke bombs being a hoax, in answering your question. Rather, one might conclude that nuke bombs are a hoax based upon the orthodox nuclear physics which I have described, in answering your question.