Posted on 09/24/2006 3:54:25 AM PDT by Hadean
Don't forget tape! :)
Oh yes, gotta have some tape.
Doesn't work like that. The plutonium core of a nuclear weapon, I read, is not even warm to the touch.Having never personally handled one, and having seen where nuclear HLW (High Level Waste e.g. Uranium reactor fuel) materal can produce heat at the rate of 2kW/m3 I'll have to have a second opinion on this ...
Reference: www.uic.com.au/nip51.htm
Presumably, a "suitcase nuke" would use plutonium239, which has a half life of about 24,000 years. As for warhead weight, the plutonium core in "fat man" was only 6.2 kilograms. (Obviously, the overall weight would be considerably higher.)
As I said in an earlier post, the key is having enough "extra" plutonium to be willing to "waste" some. The "extra" plutonium can be used in lieu of tritium to boost yield, and in lieu of isotopes with an extremely short half-life to help start the chain reaction.
Age would not be a factor for anything with a half life as long as plutonium. It COULD be a factor with the explosives and/or the electronics used to trigger the explosives. Electronics can be damaged by neutron emissions, and need a lot of maintenance if exposed to them. Hence a bomb of this type may need to have the fissile materials separated from the rest of the bomb during storage.
Age would not be a factor for anything with a half life as long as plutonium.I guess you need to do some more reading on this topic as well as consider what the 'goal' here is; compact, efficient, high-yeild back-pack sized device.
The attainment of that goal would not seem to be as simple as it is possibly being made out in your mind; during implosion it seems that it is highly desirous to enhance neutron flux at the moment of implosion; this is no doubt achieved through the use of some shorted lived isotopes (you seem to have missed this point entirely; I make it painfully obvious for all to see now) of other materials used somewhere 'in the mix' to achieve this desired 'enhanced neutron flux'.
It is these/this other material (isotopes such as Tritium or, from what I have read, Americium) is what gives a suitcase-sized nuke its short life. where short life is that time during which full yield can be expected.
Outside this period lower yield and/or possible non-operation can be expected.
OK, 2nd Opinion: I've haven't "handled" the core, but I certainly have "handled" the stuff around it. They ain't hot (temperature wise).
Remember, radioactive decay (and associated heat) can be many things other than neutron emission. But alpha and beta particles are not going to set off a chain reaction.
What you say about high level nuclear reactor waste is of course true. One recollects the Russian processing accidents.
Nuclear weapons use carefully separated isotopes.
Well, so far, you haven't answered the original question with anything but subjective observations ...
I doubt more reading would help. I already know how to do this stuff.
You are talking about efficient bombs, which are much more sophisticated than they need to be if the amount of plutonium is not a limiting factor.
You also missed key parts of the presumed goal: simple, long lived, low maintenance. That CAN be achieved, although I do not know if it actually WAS.
I've explained how. Whether you choose to think differently is up to you.
Thanks for the info...
You make some very logical points.
I agree about the nukes but there are Russians available to do maintenance - for a price. Thought Hiroshima was bigger but I'll believe 12.5 KT, I would still like about 30 if I was making a point. Especially a ground event.
30 Kilotons at 500ft to 1500ft would be devastating. Even a ground burst would be very destructive.
That said, I still have serious doubts about these kinds of stories not only because of what I know about nuclear weapons but because the same stories (with minor variations) have appeared every year since Sept. 11th.
Then maybe you should move soon;)
Yeah, that's one religious guy all right... What a jerk -- Off with him.
Hiroshima may have seemed bigger because as I recall it is in kind of a bowl geographically.
Supposedly all that stuff declines with time anyway, but if some terrorist release nukes, IMO the gloves come off and America becomes Rambo on steroids and starts to level Islamic cities and cult holy sites.
IMO
I doubt more reading would help. I already know how to do this stuff.THAT may be the problem.
(And now you are making me really lose faith faith in some of you 'keyboard warriors' here.)
Since I got zero input and cooperation from you chaps, I had to dig up the following information 'cause you guys either 1) did know this and would not share it, 2) did not know it and would not say so 3) simply didn't know it or 4) didn't know but also didn't know where to look it up.
In any case, the net result was the same.
Now, on to the meat of the matter, to wit, the amount of heat energy that could be expected to be produced by typical 'warhead' nuclear material (I'll assume Plutonium-239 here).
Flat out, it get warms, quite warm as a matter of fact if enclosed and insulated from the ambient (insulated from the 'pool' of air that we are all immersed in and cooled by).
Okay, try this in your pipe:
Plutonium-239 is the preferred isotope for weapons use. ... Pu-239 produces almost 2 watts/kg. ...Pieces of Pu-239 are consequently quite warm.
If a piece were thoroughly insulated, its temperature would rise from room temperature to the boiling point of water in less than two hours, and to the alpha-beta transition point soon after.
This presents a problem in weapon design since elevated temperatures can be reached from self-heating, even if environmental heating is avoided.
You mention something the left has yet to grasp. Al Qaeda doesn't care who supports them here, they want all of us dead.
Liberals can whine about Islamic rights, civil rights, whatever, radical Muslims still want them as dead as much as they want us dead.
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