Wrong again. You are digging your own whole deeper and deeperMy bad. You copy/pasted from another site, sourced from Wikipedia. Sorry for the confusion.
Section 1.0 Types of Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions
Version 2.16: 1 May 1998
COPYRIGHT CAREY SUBLETTE
This material may be excerpted, quoted, or distributed freely
provided that attribution to the author (Carey Sublette) and
document name (Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions) is
clearly preserved. I would prefer that the user also include the
URL of the source.
Only authorized host sites may make this document publicly
available on the Internet through the World Wide Web, anonymous FTP, or
other means. Unauthorized host sites are expressly forbidden. If you
wish to host this FAQ, in whole or in part, please contact me at:
careysub@earthling.net
This restriction is placed to allow me to maintain version control.
The current authorized host sites for this FAQ are the High Energy
Weapons Archive hosted/mirrored at:
http://gawain.membrane.com/hew/
http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/
and Rand Afrikaans University Engineering hosted at:
http://www-ing.rau.ac.za/
You show me a engineer that can control plutonium-240 and I will show you that Santa Clause really exist.Oy . . . the Russian engineers did not want it to hit 100Mt. The design could detonate to 100Mt, but they scaled it back to 50Mt, intentionally. Keep in mind, they graduated from actual universities and have real educations. Not from diploma mills, like yours.
Sorry for making you appear foolish in the eyes of the Internet. I'll keep a more careful concern for your feelings in the future.
Edit - Burn! Quoted before the Edit.
Google's auto location detect isn't very accurate here.
Of course we do, but we're not "mad"...just misunderstoodFor reference, according to the map you would need 1000000000kt to take out most of North America.
I'm sure mad scientists already know this.
Wrong again. You are digging your own whole deeper and deeper
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html
According to that site:
This three stage weapon was actually a 100 megaton bomb design, but the uranium fusion stage tamper of the tertiary (and possibly the secondary) stage(s) was replaced by one(s) made of lead. This reduced the yield by 50% by eliminating the fast fissioning of the uranium tamper by the fusion neutrons, and eliminated 97% of the fallout (1.5 megatons of fission, instead of about 51.5 Mt), yet still proved the full yield design.
Look guys, none of this information is going to get you laid in any way, shape, or form, so just drop it. k?
Pretty cool to see what it would look like if one went off at Fort Hood which is only about 25 miles from me...not nearly as bad as I would have thought for the common ones:\
According to that site:
This three stage weapon was actually a 100 megaton bomb design, but the uranium fusion stage tamper of the tertiary (and possibly the secondary) stage(s) was replaced by one(s) made of lead. This reduced the yield by 50% by eliminating the fast fissioning of the uranium tamper by the fusion neutrons, and eliminated 97% of the fallout (1.5 megatons of fission, instead of about 51.5 Mt), yet still proved the full yield design.
Remember the Tsar was designed for a fission-fusion-fission bomb. To add more Megatons oempf you need to add deuterium and tritium to the second stage. With 97 percent fusion (which is the ones that must split your depleted uranium) they only manage 50 Megatons. To make a bomb more powerfull you add to the fusion stage. They were 97 at percent. So no the Tsar design was a f up back then they could not get to 100MT even if they wanted to.Bombs that are billed as "clean" bombs (a relative term) obtain a large majority of their total yield from fusion. The last and largest stage of these bombs is always a pure fusion stage (not counting the spark plug), substituting a non-fissionable material for the jacket. The fusion-fraction of these designs as demonstrated in tests has been as high as 97% (this was the Tsar Bomba, see below).
Yeah but depending on how the wind blows the fallout could result in a slow, nasty death from radiation sickness. Better to be vaporized instantly than to die that way.
Just to reiterate: the yield of the Tsar Bomb was limited to reduce fallout. Uusing the uranium tampers for a 100Mt explosion would probably have poisoned a lot of people. Depending on which way the wind blew they could be Russian, or any number of other countries in which case WWIII would be nearly guaranteed.
"Reactor-grade plutonium is significantly more radioactive, which complicates its use in nuclear weapons."
No. To get more radiation you need reactor-grade plutonium.
To prove this I quote from the Proliferation Vulnerability Red Team Report
SAND 97-8203, Printed October 1996.
The initial three-stage design was capable of yielding the power of approximately 100 Mt, but would have caused too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage and possibly the second stage had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction). This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from fusion alone (as such, it was one of the "cleanest" nuclear bombs ever created, generating a very low amount of fallout relative to its yield). There was a strong incentive for this modification since most of the fallout from a test of the bomb would have ended up on populated Soviet territory.[6][7]
Most modern nuclear weapons utilize 238U as a "tamper" material (see nuclear weapon design). A tamper which surrounds a fissile core works to reflect neutrons and to add inertia to the compression of the Pu-239 charge. As such, it increases the efficiency of the weapon and reduces the critical mass required. In the case of a thermonuclear weapon 238U can be used to encase the fusion fuel, the high flux of very energetic neutrons from the resulting fusion reaction causes 238U nuclei to split and adds more energy to the "yield" of the weapon. Such weapons are referred to as fission-fusion-fission weapons after the three consecutive stages of the explosion. An example of such a weapon is Castle Bravo although the fission of its unenriched uranium tamper was not intentional.[citation needed]
The larger portion of the total explosive yield in this design comes from the final fission stage fueled by 238U, producing enormous amounts of radioactive fission products. For example, an estimated 77% of the 10.4-megaton yield of the Ivy Mike thermonuclear test in 1952 came from fast fission of the depleted uranium tamper. Because depleted uranium has no critical mass, it can be added to thermonuclear bombs in almost unlimited quantity. The Soviet Union's test of the "Tsar Bomba" in 1961 produced "only" 60 megatons of explosive power, over 90% of which came from fusion, because the 238U final stage had been replaced with lead. Had 238U been used instead, the yield of the "Tsar Bomba" could have been well-above 100 megatons, and it would have produced nuclear fallout equivalent to one third of the global total that had been produced up to that time.
Can you post an image of your nuclear engineering degree? I want to see what one looks like.
Meanwhile, I'll quote things too.
In case you are a doctor too, how healthy do you think it is to breathe in powdered U-238?
Not that this would have been a concern for the Soviet military.
Edit - I also posted this site months ago. Still think its awesome though.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?lat=33.545&lng=-111.95999999999998&zm=3&kt=1000000000
You're gonna fry!
Possible...maybe...practical...not really:\Is it possible to build a nuclear firecracker ie: Nuclear M-80. Yield, 8 ounces of TNT.
Click the link above - it was designed for around 100, but they made at least one of the tampers from lead instead of uranium. The official US estimate was 57Mt. Towards the end of the article it talks about how the blast was estimated, and whether it was really 57 or 50 Mt. No indication that it could've been 100 or more.
Castle Bravo went over the expected yield because they hadn't quite figured lithium out.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html
Why did you mark the 60MT part in bold if you are talking about depleted uranium? Adding more deuterium and tritium will increase the power and rack up more megatons. That is the fusion stage. More megatons does not mean more radiation and that Wiki articles are littered with citations. H-bomb aka thermonuclear weapons has no practical limit. Fusion is needed to split the U-238. Yes it produces the most radio active fall out from it but it does not increase the power of it. And why are you talking about depleted uranium when I am talking about plutonium? The bomb in Nagasaki was a plutonium bomb and did you see what a few kilotons did without depleted uranium?
Wasn't there a US bomb that went over yield because it's casing was U238 as well? Again thought to be inert, but it wasn't under the extreme circumstances of the bomb blast...
Edit: It was Castle Bravo.
A dirty device derived from the Bassoon was weaponized to create the highest yield weapon the U.S. ever fielded, the 25 megaton Mk-41.
Adding U-238 definately increases the Yield of the weapon. Check out Castle Bravo, which was only supposed to have a yield of 5MT and ended up at 15MT.
It was designed with 97% percent fission.
fishion-fushion-fishion
But it was designed for a 100MT but only 50MT was recorded WHY? WHY? WHY? Oh WHY?
Because plutonium-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fission which means it has the nack to start a chain reaction which reduce the weapon yield by starting it prematurely. That is why the 100 were 50 when it was tested. So using 240 you sit with a bang for buck lucky packet where the MT is I hope number rather than a reality what you would get. It is expected with cheap plutonium
Remember the Tsar was designed for a fission-fusion-fission bomb. To add more Megatons oempf you need to add deuterium and tritium to the second stage. With 97 percent fusion (which is the ones that must split your depleted uranium) they only manage 50 Megatons. To make a bomb more powerfull you add to the fusion stage. They were 97 at percent. So no the Tsar design was a f up back then they could not get to 100MT even if they wanted to.
Adding U-238 definately increases the Yield of the weapon. Check out Castle Bravo, which was only supposed to have a yield of 5MT and ended up at 15MT.
I mean seriously if a bang goes bigger than expected someone messed up somewhere or where testing certain things. But those are state secrets and we will never know what really really was the cause otherwise we would all be making one.Castle Bravo, which was only supposed to have a yield of 5MT and ended up at 15MT.
So the tested Tsar Bomb was a Fission-Fusion weapon and not a Fission-Fusion-Fission weapon because the jacket was removed. I think that is where the confusion came fromBombs that release a significant amount of energy directly by fusion, but do not use fusion neutrons to fission the fusion stage jacket, are called Fission-Fusion weapons. If they employ the additional step of jacket fissioning using fusion neutrons they are called Fission-Fusion-Fission weapons.
You are partially off in your statements. As other's have posted, the bomb was purposefully derated down from 100 megatons to minimize fallout. They did this by replacing the Uranium-238 tampers surrounding the bomb with a lead tamper. This eliminated the the fast-fissioning of the Uranium and as a result, the 97% statistic you keep mentioning is what came from Fusion of the Fusion fuel. If they had included the U-238 tamper like originally designed, they could have easily gotten to 100 MT or more. You need to understand that the fast-fissioning of the U238 tamper yields great amounts of energy and great amounts of fallout
Do you see the size of the bomb? With a tamper that big made of U238, the rest of the power would have been realized. It was not a fuck-up but an intentional move on the Soviet's part to minimize fallout. Fusion does not generate the long lived fallout particles that fission does, this is why the bomb was "relatively clean" for it's size, again bc 97% of the power came from fusion.