Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Plutonium

Pyro_cat - 24-9-2019 at 21:52

This is the best I have found so far.

Going Nuclear - Nuclear Science - Part 3 - Plutonium Implosion
Scott Manley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufRzj89VoH4


Anything else out there with this much detail and pictures ?




MineMan - 25-9-2019 at 18:25

I think Iran has something... ask the Mossad

Pyro_cat - 1-10-2019 at 21:13

Quote: Originally posted by MineMan  
I think Iran has something... ask the Mossad


I guess. Probably North Korea has more interesting designs.

Watched all these documentaries. I had no idea they did that many tests, for the environment its like we already had a nuclear war. Went from this is interesting to those guys were nuts and reckless.

SWIM - 1-10-2019 at 22:08

In the USA, the danger of fallout from above ground testing was a matter of some concern as early as the mid 50s.

It was a big issue in the 1956 Presidential race but people decided they'd prefer Eisenhower with stromtium 90 to Stevenson without strontium 90. (That was the same race where one of the Vice-Presidential candidates said H-bombs might knock the earth off its axis and change the weather:D:D:D)

I believe some of those old American bombs were VERY dirty.
At least one fusion device had a U-238 casing which gave the bomb an extra boost, but resulted in a lot more fission products, and maybe even a fair amount of un-reacted plutonium, being blown around.

I recall somebody somewhere asserting it was worse than a cobalt casing, but I have no idea if this was really true.

Pyro_cat - 2-10-2019 at 20:58

Interesting cause I was enjoying watching these but it was this one video that kind of disgusted me , Operation Wigwam - Underwater Nuclear Test Film (1955) https://youtu.be/ku7R1TSBfjI?t=1297

Send a shock wave throughout the pacific ocean and hammer every creature in it plus all that radiation.
Quote: Originally posted by SWIM  
one of the Vice-Presidential candidates said H-bombs might knock the earth off its axis and change the weather:D:D:D)


I can believe it. I remember reading this.

PUBLISHED MARCH 3, 2010

Saturday's Chile earthquake was so powerful that it likely shifted an Earth axis and shortened the length of a day, NASA announced Monday.


By speeding up Earth's rotation, the magnitude 8.8 earthquake—the fifth strongest ever recorded, according to the USGS—should have shortened an Earth day by 1.26 millionths of a second, according to new computer-model calculations by geophysicist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

For comparison, the same model estimated that the magnitude 9 Sumatra earthquake in December 2004 shortened the length of a day by 6.8 millionths of a second.

Gross also estimates that the Chile earthquake shifted Earth's figure axis by about three inches (eight centimeters).

More https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/3/100302-chile-...

specialactivitieSK - 19-11-2019 at 02:54

Or clean fusion bomb with lithium deuteride with little bit deuterium and tritium initiated with shaped Charges.

MineMan - 20-11-2019 at 23:10

Quote: Originally posted by specialactivitieSK  
Or clean fusion bomb with lithium deuteride with little bit deuterium and tritium initiated with shaped Charges.


Can you expand more on this. How would shape charge initiation help? How clean could this be. I am a big fan of peaceful bombs.

Pyro_cat - 21-11-2019 at 20:06

https://web.archive.org/web/20130421081647/http://monstermaschine.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/why-mankind-must-not-fear-the-pure-fusion-bomb/

I wanted to see a diagram and I often find the more interesting pages when I click on images.

[Edited on 22-11-2019 by Pyro_cat]

Bert - 22-11-2019 at 12:52

Fusion power has been said to be achievable in the next 20 years for about 60 years now.

Still waiting. I want my flying car too, goddamnit!

Herr Haber - 25-11-2019 at 04:17

Too many obstacles for "simple" (yeah right) projects like ITER.

So far these projects have provided the world with a lot of "we couldnt anticipate this problem".
Unfortunately, it seems that even if land based fusion reactors based on one design of Tokamak or another appear someday we'll never have starships with a torus like in the movies. Sad :(

unionised - 25-11-2019 at 08:54

Quote: Originally posted by SWIM  


I recall somebody somewhere asserting it was worse than a cobalt casing, but I have no idea if this was really true.

It may or may not have been true at the time, but, by now the 60Co from a cobalt laced bomb would have practically all decayed- it has a 5 year half life.
Some of the fission products from a Uranium tamped bomb would still be with us.

Fulmen - 25-11-2019 at 09:36

Quote: Originally posted by SWIM  

At least one fusion device had a U-238 casing which gave the bomb an extra boost


If you by casing mean a tamper then a large percentage of the designs have used it. It actually serves several functions, it's both an inertial tamper, a neutron reflector and a fuel.
U238 actually has a decent fission cross section for very high energy neutrons, so it's a simple way to increase yield.

Quote:

Or clean fusion bomb ... initiated with shaped Charges.


Bwhaaa. Good luck, current thermonuclear bombs ignite fusion by crushing the fuel between two nuclear explosions.

Pyro_cat - 12-12-2019 at 21:42

The energy of a nuke can be made with conventional explosives.





stacked 500-short-ton (454 t) charge of TNT high explosive detonated on the shore close to the ships under test. However, since a TNT detonation releases energy more slowly than a nuclear explosion, the blast effect was equivalent to a 1 kiloton of TNT (4.2 TJ) nuclear weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sailor_Hat

So slower makes a stronger blast effect but that would be a problem for fusion I think because the extra time it takes would lower the concentration of the energy.

Would the military even bother exploring this as a fusion bomb weighing 500 tons is not something they would really want.

Fulmen - 13-12-2019 at 07:49

I don't think you understand just how powerful an atomic device really is. The pit (plutonium core) is appr 10cm in diameter, yet it can produce a blast of several hundred kilotons in about one microsecond.

Besides, somebody would have done the math and tested it if it had any chance of working. Even if you can't air drop it such a device could be delivered by a boat or submarine.

Fulmen - 13-12-2019 at 11:51

Just to illustrate the difference between a chemical and fission explosion:

In the Gadget/Fat Man devices the the implosion pressure was in the order of a few million atmospheres. At the center of the sun we're talking more than ten million degrees and three hundred billion atmospheres.