in need of a expert in reactions

[deleted-310534]

I can't find a answer to my question anywhere online, which leads me to believe it hasn't been asked.

what would happen if you dropped uranium into liquid nitrogen?

would the uranium freeze or the liquid nitrogen boil?

or some completely different reaction?

I am not that smart so please make the answer for dummies.

thanks in advance, Jack.

[SciB]

I'm sure you are not a dummy, Jack! No one, not even us experts, knows everything about everything. And a lot of what we think we know is wrong!

Ok, what about uranium? It might interest you to know that Pierre Curie did this experiment in 1911, so you are in good company: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/41 ... mperature/
What he concluded from dipping radium into liquid hydrogen (even colder than liquid nitrogen!) was that the rate of radioactive decay was independent of temperature.

Inside a nuclear power plant are a bunch of rods of enriched uranium that are brought close enough together for a thermonuclear reaction to occur but not a chain-reaction explosion. The heat from the reaction is transferred usually to water which becomes steam to drive a turbine that generates electricity. If you used liquid nitrogen to cool the rods, the heat would cause the liquid to boil and maybe you could power a turbine with that gas but it probably wouldn't be very efficient.

As to freezing the uranium--it's already a solid and apparently being cold does not alter its radioactivity so even on Mars where it is really cold, the uranium reaction should still work.

I'm not sure I answered your questions so let us know if you have more.

Sybee