The ‘Tsar Bomba’ Was a 50-Megaton Monster Nuke

War is Boring ^ | April 1, 2015 | Paul Richard Huard

[C19fan]

Maj. Andrei Durnovtsev, a Soviet air force pilot and commander of a Tu-95 Bear bomber, holds a dubious honor in the history of the Cold War.

Durnovtsev flew the aircraft that dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever. It had an explosive force of 50 megatons, or more than 3,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima weapon.

Over the years, historians identified many names for the test bomb.

[C19fan]

I highly recommend seeing the movie "Trinity and Beyond". Gorgeous, awe inspiring, and chilling documentary about nuclear tests. There is a segment about the Tsar Bomba. It was one of the cleanest nuclear tests ever. The Ruskies to keep the yield down used non-fissionable materials like lead in place of uranium that would usually fission from the fast neutrons from the thermonuclear 2nd stage.

[SpeakerToAnimals]

Trinity and beyond should be shown in high schools. I also recommend a book called 15 minutes. It is a history of SAC. It has lots of info on Castle Bravo, Americas 15 megaton bomb test.

[Fiji Hill]

[If the bomb were dropped over the Library Tower in downtown LA] Within five miles of ground zero, everyone not killed by the blast and heat would receive a lethal dose of 500 rems of high-energy radiation. Up to 20 miles away from the detonation, the blast wave would gut every building — even concrete and steel reinforced buildings.

USC, UCLA, Occidental College, and even Whittier College--home of the Fighting Poets--would all be gone.

[gaijin]

Later

[gaijin]

I heard that they anticipated Castle Bravo would be just 5 MT but turned out to be 15 MT and was actually an accident.

[jjotto]

Tsar Bomba weighed 27 tons!? 1400 times combined power of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Tsar Bomba was ‘detuned’ by half to rein in fallout. Amazing!

http://gizmodo.com/5977824/the-biggest-bomb-in-the-history-of-the-world

[skinkinthegrass]

someone forgot move the decimal point on their slide-rule?

[WakeUpAndVote]

But, fire does not melt steel. /s

[GBA]

Whoa...unreal.

The resulting fireball had a radius of nearly 10,000 vertical feet and its 210,000 foot tall mushroom cloud reached into the stratosphere. The light generated by the reaction could be seen from over a 1,000 km and the force of its explosion registered a 5.0 on the Richter scale.

The shock wave generated air pressures topping 300 PSI, circled the Earth thrice, and cracked windows 900 km away in Norway and Finland. Buildings in the abandoned town of Severny 55 km away were leveled—all of them—and upon later inspection, ground zero was reportedly the texture of a skating rink.

[stboz]

The Sovs were sending us a message:

We have a big one AND WE CAN DELIVER IT. If we miss by a mile or two, ...meh.

[C19fan]

In theory there is no limit on how many stages thus yield one can have in the Ulm-Teller design. There were stories the Ruskies were interested in building a doomsday ship. The ship would be one giant thermonuclear weapon and if it stopped receiving some signal it would go off.

[Zathras]

Correct. All they needed was to boost the U238 tamper by about 30lbs and it would have been 100MT

[Boonie]

If or when we ever engage in a world wide nuclear war, I hope the first blast goes off 100 feet over my head...

[Tijeras_Slim]

The Shrimp device tested in Bravo was a 15 Mt two stage thermonuclear surface burst. This was the first “dry” or solid fuel (lithium deuteride fueled) H-Bomb tested by the U.S., and the first solid fuel Teller-Ulam device ever tested. It was the largest bomb ever tested by the U.S. although this was by accident. The yield of Bravo dramatically exceeded predictions, being about 2.5 times higher than the best guess and almost double the estimated maximum possible yield (6 Mt predicted, estimated yield range 4-8 Mt).

The Shrimp test device was basically a scaled down version of the Runt device tested in Castle Romeo, but with partially enriched lithium as fuel. Its weight was a comparatively light 23,500 lb, and it was 179.5 in long and 53.9 in wide. The fuel consisted of 37-40% enriched lithium-6 deuteride encased in a natural uranium tamper. 10 Mt of the yield was from fast fission of the tamper. The Shrimp also tested light case design, substituting an aluminium exterior case for the steel used in the Sausage (tested in Ivy Mike). It used a RACER IV fusion boosted primary.

The reason for the unexpectedly high yield was due to the “tritium bonus” provided by the lithium-7 isotope which made up most of the lithium. This isotope was expected to be essentially inert, but in fact it had a substantial reaction cross section with the high energy neutrons produced by tritium-deuterium fusion. When one of these high energy neutrons collided with a lithium-7 atom, it could fragment it into a tritium and a helium atom. Tritium was the most valuable fusion fuel, being both highly reactive and causing extremely energetic fusion, so this extra source of tritium greatly increased the weapon yield.

[Constitution Day]

"Trinity and Beyond" is a fantastic documentary.

I follow the YouTube channel (atomcentral) that was created by the maker of "Trinity" (Peter Kuran).

Recently he posted that he wants to update the documentary for the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb. There is a Kickstarter page set up for this.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1891773321/trinity-and-beyond-special-70th-anniversary-of-the

[CPT Clay]

OMG

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I remember when it was dropped. American military poo-pooed it by saying it would be better to drop several smaller bombs than one big one.

[gr8eman]

Your knowledge is impressive. FR Rocks!

[Joan Kerrey]

We have a big one AND WE CAN DELIVER IT.

Gort, forget klatu barada nikto. Go to plan B.

[JoeFromSidney]

Gort, forget klatu barada nikto.

I have a friend who wears a necktie to science fiction conventions. It reads, "Klatu barada necktie."