Chapter 389: The Foundation of the Nuclear Plan (Fourth update, please subscribe)
In the tropical rain forest covered by green waves, a road winds through it. As the car drove on the highway, looking at the tropical rainforest on both sides of the road, Li Yi'an couldn't help but praise the work efficiency of the Japanese prisoners - although Highway 2, the East Coast Highway, the 1,154-kilometer highway from Chief to Taiping The construction period of the road was only 23 months, a full nine months ahead of Highway 1 on the West Bank.
I have to admit that the work efficiency of the captives is still very high. After all, the captives have to pay a price for "passive and slow work".
"What a pity..."
The reason why Li Yian said it was a pity is because now all the prisoners have been used for reclamation, and as for road construction and other infrastructure projects, they have been handed over to immigrants. In the second half of 1948, more and more immigrants came to Tangshan to escape the war, and they even approached the limit. In November, as many as 1.27 million immigrants poured into Nanyang through various means.
In order to accommodate the surge in immigrants, in addition to increasing the working area of the reclamation area, more than a dozen major new projects have been launched. The Kayan River Hydropower Station that Li Yi'an is now going to is one of them. It is the next addition to the Kinabatangan River Hydropower Station. , the second hydropower station in Nanyang, with an installed capacity of 300,000 kilowatts. It seems small in scale, but it can generate 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. It can not only supply industrial land in the East China Sea, but more importantly, it can also supply nuclear power in Borneo. plan.
This is also the reason why the nuclear program is being fully promoted this year - the power problem that hinders the development of atomic bombs is being solved.
Many people think that the atomic bomb only needs U235, but the extraction of U235 requires a lot of electricity - the "Manhattan Project" in the United States to develop the atomic bomb consumes 20 billion kilowatt hours of electricity every year. The Soviet Union developed the first atomic bomb every year. 10 billion degrees will also be used.
Although in the past three years, Borneo has built five large power stations with a total installed capacity of more than 2 million kilowatts, the annual power generation is only 17 billion kWh, plus hydropower and factory automatic The power plant has a power generation capacity of only 20 billion kWh.
Such a little electricity... is definitely not enough to make an atomic bomb.
Coupled with the daily increase in industrial electricity consumption caused by the commissioning of factories, there is simply no excess electricity to use for atomic bombs.
This is Li Yi'an's biggest headache. In order to solve the power problem, in addition to building a new thermal power station with an installed capacity of 1 million kilowatts, the Kayan River Hydropower Station is also the key.
Their annual power generation capacity is exactly 10 billion kilowatt-hours!
It can basically meet the needs of research on atomic bombs.
Due to insufficient power, in the past three years, Borneo could only steadily advance its nuclear program based on reality. In fact, it was conducting research on subsystems, just like the research on nuclear weapons by Asan and other countries in later generations. They are all disguised for civilian use and scientific research.
Last October, Nanyang's first graphite-moderated reactor was started in Taiping, achieving a controlled chain fission reaction of uranium. The purpose, of course, was to extract the plutonium needed to make the atomic bomb.
However, that is only part of Borneo's nuclear program.
As for the extraction of U235, project teams at several universities are also steadily advancing this work. In addition, the "Central Physics Laboratory" in the hinterland of Borneo is basically completed.
The development of atomic bombs in Nanyang is naturally on the agenda.
……
A convoy of several cars walked on a simple mountain road in the rainforest, sometimes passing through high mountains and sometimes winding up and down the banks of the Kayan River.
The water of the Kayan River below the mountain is crystal clear, and you can clearly see the pebbles in the water. When the convoy crossed a mountain, a vivid and magnificent picture appeared in front of people: two rivers intersected in a "Y" shape in the valley, sandwiching the mountain in the middle.
On both sides of the river, people have built rows of simple wooden houses. On both sides of the mountains, the former rainforest has disappeared and turned into an area of more than ten square kilometers. The town is dotted with wooden houses, countless cars dragging dust tails on the road, transport ships load large quantities of building materials, and bucket trucks run back and forth on the spider web-like track.
Within a radius of more than ten kilometers, there was a boiling sound everywhere.
Workers at hydropower stations live among the simple wooden structures along the river. All of them come from all over Tangshan. After simple training, they entered the mechanical construction team with education. Positions such as pneumatic drill operators, blasters, concrete workers, welders, and fitters do not require much knowledge. Even many car drivers are illiterate at all. There are more than 18,000 workers on this construction site.
Compared to plantations, it is large-scale construction sites like this that really attract immigrants. In addition to the hydropower station construction site, there are many corresponding industrial facilities that also provide tens of thousands of jobs.
“The approved investment for this power station is 18 million yuan. The dam body is a gravity arch dam and the annual power generation is expected to be 1.5 billion kilowatt hours. In this way, the investment per kilowatt hour of electricity is only 0.012 yuan. The cost is only 0.0078 yuan. At the current electricity price, it only takes two years to recover the entire investment.”
During the introduction by Hayes, the chief engineer of the project, Li Yian stopped and looked at the dense high-voltage power. Wire glanced at it, and upon seeing this, Hayes continued to introduce:
"After the power station is completed, seven high-voltage transmission lines will be sent to the East China Sea and Chang'an and other areas. At that time, the hydropower station will be centered on the A power grid with a radius of 300 kilometers.”
Li Yian is no stranger to these data, but looking at the data on paper is different from the field investigation. The group continued to walk forward, passing through the river dam construction site, walking to the east bank of the Kayan River, and climbing up to look at the Many vast basins in the winding mountains will be submerged in the future and become a giant reservoir. The reservoir can regulate floods in the rainforest and save tens of millions of acres of plantations downstream from floods in the rainy season.
In the rainy season in Borneo, it rains for several months. The hydropower station can alleviate the floods in the rainy season to a certain extent, and in the dry season, the water in the reservoir can be supplied for plantation cultivation. In fact, this is also the reason why hydropower stations need to be built in Borneo, to regulate water resources between the rainy and dry seasons.
But the more important thing is power generation. After all, for Borneo, whether it is industrial construction or other aspects, it is inseparable from electricity, and cheap hydropower is an effective supplement to reduce energy costs.
"Maybe in the future, nuclear power plants can be built. When was the first nuclear power plant in the world built? We can let them conduct research in this area and use nuclear energy peacefully!"
After leaving the hydropower station, Li Nian inspected the Oasis Coal Mine in Taiping Province. This open-pit coal mine has a designed production capacity of 6 million tons and is the largest open-pit coal mine in Borneo. All equipment comes from Germany - mining was introduced through barter trade. equipment.
In the past three years, the three provinces of Nanyang have successively established 26 open-pit coal mines, providing sufficient coal supply to ensure Nanyang's power demand. During the coal mine inspection, Li Yi'an specifically went to the Hangkou Power Plant, which is equipped with four 25 The giant power plant with 10,000-kilowatt generating units is the largest power plant in this era and is also the fundamental guarantee for Borneo’s nuclear plan.
"8.76 billion kilowatt-hours, sir. When it is completed next year, the tight power supply situation in Borneo will be fundamentally alleviated."
Qin Chunyun, the manager of the power plant, said this When he spoke, he had no idea what the future mission of this power plant would be.
The nuclear program research center in Nanyang is less than 100 kilometers away from the power plant. Although the distance is so close, the two places are shrouded in dense tropical rainforest.
In fact, the only way to enter the research center is by air. The dense tropical rainforest around the research center is enough to block outsiders from exploring there.
It’s just that the research center has not been officially opened yet. Next year... next year, with the full development of the nuclear program, a large number of physicists will enter the center and begin the final research on the atomic bomb...
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(End of this chapter)