It's quite clear that the Noldor had the technology to produce an isotope with a half-life measured in tens of thousands of years...
...and for which a bit of glass was adequate shielding, at least in small amounts. So why didn't they just fucking *nuke* Morgoth?
They seem to have been skilled enough at precision workmanship to have constructed the implosion system to sufficient accuracy no problem.
Maybe it was the synchronisation of the detonators that scuppered them. Can't think of anything they had that worked on nanosecond timescale
Or maybe they just couldn't handle the maths. They do seem to have been pretty shit at maths, didn't even have a decent number system IIRC.
Probably is that. Not too much of a leap of the imagination to conceive they lucked onto plutonium production just by fucking about...
...after all, that's not too far removed from how we did it ourselves, and they had a lot more time. Probably better funding too.
But a few criticality incidents with the stuff could well have put them off fucking about with anything other than very small quantities.
Mind you its *chemical* properties make even small quantities nearly as dangerous - to the experimenter - as a full-on critical mass.
Yeah, that does sound more plausible. If they'd managed to chance on a self-regulating critical configuration good enough to build a reactor
...they'd most likely have figured criticality out well enough empirically to understand what's going on with lumps of pure fissile material
But the ease of unknowingly inhaling invisibly small oxide particles and getting a lethal internal alpha dose may well have caught them out.
They probably got put off by most of them dying for no apparent reason after trying to separate the stuff, and decided it wasn't worth it.
After all the few devices we know they did power with it aren't likely to have used more than a few grams each, tens of grams at the most.
Chances are they never managed to separate more than a few grams without killing themselves, and never had enough to realise it was fissile.
And they'd have been able to get a pile going using natural uranium and natural graphite, quite likely never realised about the two isotopes
or what difference it makes if you separate them. Which is kind of a shame because enrichment would probably have been right up their street
I'm sure they found out that if you cocked up a pile it would go whoomph and everyone who'd been nearby would die shortly afterwards.
But you can't really weaponise a pile, and they'd never have had enough WG fissile material to make it go anything more than whoomph.
And they didn't have the mathematical/theoretical knowledge to work out that it *could* go BOOOM and get that pesky mountain out of the way.
So there you go, kids. You can spend maths lessons pissing about and put up with some cunt waging a panmillenial war of attrition on you...
...Or you can pay attention and then you'll be able to nuke the fucker. See the stuff you learn in school does turn out useful in the end.
And that, folks, concludes tonight's episode of "Knowledge Of The Ancient Races".
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