Continuing the translation of the awesome shiur from Rav Berland.

You can read Part 1 HERE.

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[Skipping some about Korach is selling gold and silver mezuzahs and flying in the air with the Aron HaKodesh, until Moshe  brings him down to the ground. Then the Rav returns to a discussion of ‘the atom’.]

If you take the Eiffel Tower, and reduce it [to just the physical mass that’s contained within each atom], you’ll get a staple.

The nucleus [of an atom] is one part to a trillion of the volume. So, if you would reduce the Eiffel Tower, it would be one part in a trillion, it would be a staple. [But this staple would be so heavy] that if you would put it down, it would sink into the ground, it would cleave the earth’s globe.

[But] from the whole of the Eiffel Tower, you could make just a staple, this is the amount of ‘material’, that it’s in an atom.

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In an [atomic nucleus], there are protons and neutrons, and electrons – they are around it.

In uranium, [the nucleus] is 92 by 146 – 146 neutrons and 92 protons. So, you need for the electrons [that surround it] should balance this out, because everything is positive [i.e. positively charged]. So you need to balance it.

So, ‘against’ the neutrons and the protons, there are the electrons that encircle it, the surrounding envelope. There are around 100 ‘envelopes’ [of electrons] around it, and there are 238.

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Now [in order to make a nuclear chain reaction], you need to reduce it to 235.

In nature, it’s 238, man-made is 235. [In nature], it’s one [uranium atom in a trillion] that’s 235. So then there are centrifuges, which rotate 100,000 [times] per second, and then the excess ‘jump’ outside.

[It’s like] taking a blender, when it’s starts whirring around, everything jumps to the side.

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The proton [in the nucleus] is the opposite.

The proton – you have to add protons. Let’s say you want to make radium from the uranium. Uranium is 92, [radium is] 88. You need to reduce it by four. You need to make it fly 700,000 km, in order for the protons to jump out.[1]

And if you want to add protons, then you need to take radioactive material – Madame Curie discovered this in 1897, discovered radium, and this discharges neutrons.

You need a computer that costs a billion dollars, to add these [i.e. the neutrons that are discharged from the radium] to the nucleus.

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The nucleus is microscopic.

You can’t see it. And then the neutrons enter into the heart of the nucleus, and are transformed into protons. The protons turn the neutrons into protons, because neutrons are neutral [i.e. they don’t carry either a negative or positive charge].

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So, if you want to transform iron into gold – iron is 26 and gold is 79.

You need to add 53 protons, so in the laboratory, they succeeded in doing this.

Now, take lead and transform the lead into gold. Lead is 82, gold is 79, so you need to take away 3. You need to reduce it from 82 to 79. They successfully produced this, but then it collapsed for them. They still don’t know how t odo it.

The labs already succeeded in transforming lead into gold, by way of subtracting the 79 from the 82, but it’s impossible to market this, it crumbles immediately.

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Translated and Excerpted from Shivivei Or, 417.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is possibly a reference to what is happening underground in Switzerland…

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Here’s some more stuff to read, about uranium 235 / uranium 238, from Wiki:

(From HERE):

Uranium-235 (²³⁵
U or U-235) is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that exists in nature as a primordial nuclide.

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(From HERE):

Uranium-238 (²³⁸
U or U-238) is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature, with a relative abundance above 99%. Unlike uranium-235, it is non-fissile, which means it cannot sustain a chain reaction in a thermal-neutron reactor. However, it is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239. ²³⁸U cannot support a chain reaction because inelastic scattering reduces neutron energy below the range where fast fission of one or more next-generation nuclei is probable.

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So, I don’t know if I’m reading this correctly, but it seems to be saying on wiki that you ONLY get U-235 naturally, and in very minimal quantities, and when you try to ‘reduce’ the U-238 – then you get weapons’ grade plutonium, NOT U-235.

Is that how you are understanding this?

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Next, here’s what is says about Plutonium from Wiki:

Plutonium-239 (²³⁹
Pu or Pu-239) is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 is also used for that purpose. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in thermal spectrum nuclear reactors, along with uranium-235 and uranium-233. 

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So according to this, the three types of ‘isotopes’ you can use for fuel in a nuclear reactor are:

1. U-235 – which is super, super, super rare in nature.
2. Plutonium-239 – which is apparently made from U-238.
3. And lastly, now they are talking about U-233.

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HERE‘s what wiki has to say about U-233:

Uranium-233 (²³³
U or U-233) is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons and as a reactor fuel.^[2] It has been used successfully in experimental nuclear reactors and has been proposed for much wider use as a nuclear fuel.

They get U-233 from THORIUM.

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In a book written by a bunch of mesichist-Chabadnik scientists called: Scientific Thought in Messianic Times, which I have on my bookshelf, there is a paper in Chapter III: Swords Into Plowshares – The Trend of History, that says this:

7. A Nuclear Reactor for the Era of Moshiach

a) Interview with Prof. Alvin Radkowsky

b) Using Thorium in a Commercial Nuclear Fuel Cycle – by Prof. Alvin Radkowsky.

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Radkowsky (who died in 2002) developed something called the ‘Radkowsky Reactor’ – that was meant to enable nuclear fuel to be used for energy, without producing any by-products that could be used to make a nuclear bomb.

(Probably, this is not as difficult as it sounds ;-))

Here’s a snippet from Wiki:

In 1992, Radkowsky started what became Thorium Power Inc. (Nasdaq:LTBR). Thorium fueled reactors allow nations the capability to generate energy while preventing them from using spent fuels to produce nuclear weapons. He repeatedly insisted that continued use of uranium fuel would inevitably lead to nuclear terrorism. Thorium Power participated in the design of the thorium-based fuel to burn plutonium from old nuclear weapons. It is now being tested at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. The fuel RTF (Radkowsky Thorium Fuel) is named after him.

By 2014, long after the Kurchatov trial was expected to have produced results, none have apparently been published. Thorium Power Inc itself has changed its name to Lightbridge and seems to have lost interest in RTF.

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I’m going to stop there, for now, but Dr Radkowsky was a full-blown Chabad mesichist – and also:

[C]hief scientist in the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (now Dept. of Energy), Office of Naval Reactors from 1950 to 1972. He taught nuclear engineering at Tel Aviv University (1972–1994), and at Ben Gurion University (1994–2002).

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Interesting, how the same people, the same interests, always seem to intersect in this story.

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UPDATE:

According to Radkowsky’s Wiki HERE:

In 1979 Radkowsky founded New Power Technology in Israel….Feldhamer Capital was appointed by the Israeli Energy Ministry to commercialize New Power Technology following an agreement between the Energy ministry and the Universities of Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion where the research was conducted. The advisory committee and board of directors were a collection of the world’s most famous Manhattan Project and Nobel Prize winning physicists, all willing to lend their names to this humane venture.

Professor Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and founder of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Nobel Prizewinner Professor Eugene Wigner of Princeton University, Dr. Alvin Radkowsky, Nobel Prizewinner Professor Hans Bethe of Cornell University and Professor Herbert Goldstein of Columbia University all lent their reputations to this venture. The initiative was halted after the 1986 Chernobyl accident put a stop to any interest in new nuclear designs, even though that very accident could never have occurred with the Radkowsky improvement.

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Except…. ‘New Power Technology’ is still going strong.

HERE is their website, and below, is a snippet of a very recent press release, from July 15, 2025:

NEW YORK, July 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — With Washington incentivizing fossil and fission as strategic sources of America’s power in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the future of fusion energy is being championed by the newly formed 21^st Century Fusion Power – Manhattan Project in recognition that the nation which conquers this game-changing technology will dominate the remainder of this century….

Fusion energy depends on taking hydrogen out of an easily retrieved source, such as ocean water, and subjecting those hydrogen atoms to intense heat and pressure that rivals the surface of the Sun. From that heat one can create steam which, in turn, can generate clean and unlimited power without any of the dangers raised by traditional nuclear fission reactors.

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Like you, I have no idea what to make of this.

What I do know, is that the Rav said this in Part I of the shiur:

The sun is immoveable, you can stand on the sun. There is no end of helium there.

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The hydrogen bomb is helium.

Helium is inflammable[2]. If you do it with helium, a person can blow up the whole world, the whole of Persia, the whole of America, the whole of China, all of India. We are going to produce a helium bomb, because in the meantime we still don’t have a visa for the sun. We didn’t get one.

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I’m going to stop there, before I trip over anything that could get me into trouble, God forbid…

But sure is interesting, how many Chabad mesichists keep turning up in key positions working for the US Defense department and the Deep State…