Posted on 02/16/2015 1:08:22 AM PST by fso301
In the midst of controversy over the Israeli prime minister's plans to address Congress next month, a researcher has won the release of a decades-old Defense Department report detailing the U.S. government's extensive help to Israel in that nation's development of a nuclear bomb.
"I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the US," said Roger Mattson, a former memer of the Atomic Energy Commission technical staff.
The 1987 report, "Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations," compares the key Israeli facilities developing nuclear weapons to Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the principal U.S. laboratories that developed the bomb for the United States.
The tightly held report notes that the Israelis are "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level."
Click to read full article.
(Excerpt) Read more at courthousenews.com ...
No radiation.
Why do you think Putin is laughing at this guy? Why do you think he has beaten Obama to the punch every time? He KNOWS exactly what Obama’s reaction will be to every move. He probably knows what Obama is going to do before VJ does.
Just look at their published conventional plans. Half of the ones I’ve seen involve the IDF going scorched earth in a huge way until they can mobilize. Up to and including the use of chemical weapons - and that’s just the published plans.
The radiation from the bomb itself ceases after the fission/fusion event, yes. However, the neutron radiation in turn can make *other* objects radioactive for a lot longer through the phenomenon of neutron activation. Copying wikipedia because I don’t have the time to type it out myself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb#Effects_of_a_neutron_bomb_in_the_open_.26_in_a_city
***
Upon detonation, a 1 kiloton neutron bomb near the ground, in an airburst would produce a large blast wave, and a powerful pulse of both thermal radiation and ionizing radiation, mostly in the form of fast (14.1 MeV) neutrons. The thermal pulse would cause third degree burns to unprotected skin out to approximately 500 meters. The blast would create at least 4.6 PSI out to a radius of 600 meters, which would severely damage all non-reinforced concrete structures, at the conventional effective combat range against modern main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers (<690–900 m) the blast from a 1 kt neutron bomb will destroy or damage to the point of non-usability almost all un-reinforced civilian building. Thus the use of neutron bombs to stop an enemy armored attack by rapidly incapacitating the crew with a dose of 8000+ Rads of radiation,[38] which would require exploding large numbers of them to blanket the enemy forces, would also destroy all normal civilian buildings in the same immediate area ~600 meters,[38][39] and via neutron activation it would make many building materials in the city radioactive, such as Zinc coated steel/galvanized steel(see Area denial use below). Although at this ~600 meter distance the 4-5 PSI blast overpressure would cause very few direct casualties as the human body is resistant to sheer overpressure, the powerful winds produced by this overpressure are capable of throwing human bodies into objects or throwing objects-including window glass at high velocity, both with potentially lethal results, rendering casualties highly dependent on surroundings, including on if the building they are in collapses.[40] The pulse of neutron radiation would cause immediate and permanent incapacitation to unprotected outdoor humans in the open out to 900 meters,[4] with death occurring in one or two days. The lethal dose(LD50) of 600 Rads would extend to about 1350–1400 meters for those unprotected and outdoors,[38] where approximately half of those exposed would die of radiation sickness after several weeks.
However a human residing within, or is simply shielded by at least 1 of the aforementioned concrete buildings with walls and ceilings 30 centimeters/12 inches thick, or alternatively of damp soil 24 inches thick, the neutron radiation exposure would be reduced by a factor of 10.[41][42]
Furthermore the neutron absorption spectra of air is disputed by some authorities and depends in part on absorption by hydrogen from water vapor. It therefore might vary exponentially with humidity, making neutron bombs immensely more deadly in desert climates than in humid ones.[38]
***
See post 104. The half life of Zinc-65 is 244 days, so it would be a few years before you could go back into the area unprotected.
You mean the F-16s we sold them anyway? http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/51b-proposed-in-sales-upgrades-weapons-for-pakistans-f16s-02396/
This is just another half-assed Obama attempt to get back at Israel which is highly unlikely to do anything.
Actually, even the scientists working on Excalibur said that current materials science and engineering wasn’t up to the task and wouldn’t be for a couple decades. It wasn’t that the idea didn’t work but that the then-current tech wouldn’t let it work efficiently enough to make it a production weapon.
It’d be like trying to make an iPhone equivalent with 1950’s era vacuum tube technology. It can be done, but it’s going to be the size of a house and have a battery life measured in minutes plus you can forget about tucking it into your pocked.
Time's up. There's nothing wrong with a back burner, instead of killing it outright. My take is that if it hadn't been canceled it might be close to ready by now.
The globalists hate SDI.
This is true, but even the scientists working on it didn’t see any possibility of it going anywhere in the next decade or so. The project was *abandoned*, not summarily canceled. They were right, too. Until a couple of years ago, materials science hadn’t advanced to the point where it would have made any difference. Nanotech materials and processes that might aid the project have only really become practical in the last five years.
That goes faster when there's a big hungry customer too. I'm not saying the decision wasn't logical, but I am saying that given the long term, and especially in learning to make more of controlling such force so fast or cutting delivery time, there is a lot that could have been done. Back burners are good. My big problem with procurement is the paperwork and traceability without accountability in the supply chain. I've been there as a manufacturing engineer.
Well, they had a big hungry customer for it from 1978 through 1992 and they couldn’t get materials science to meet their needs at the time.
Another issue was on-board processing power to aim the lasing rods. The computer chip tech simply didn’t exist until a couple of years ago - and that is something that even governments pouring hideous quantities of dollars at wasn’t able to advance much.
I wasn't talking about 78-92; I was talking about 92-2105.
Another issue was on-board processing power to aim the lasing rods. The computer chip tech simply didn’t exist until a couple of years ago - and that is something that even governments pouring hideous quantities of dollars at wasn’t able to advance much.
Absolutely true. But one can learn a lot in the mean time in other respects, knowing the eventuality. Experiments are a good thing. Having done parallel research projects, one just pushes where the pushing is profitable and waits for the path-critical elements. As things are now, we have most of those critical technologies available and would have to go back to the Congress and the President to get authorization to start up all over. That is at least five years out.
It could turn out to be a very expensive five years.
I have no doubt that he meant it.
Do you think the NYT would report something that might show poorly on their messiah?
Did this even happen?
Yes. Courthousenews is a reputable site.
Enemy in the White House.
Oh, I thought we were talking about the neutron bomb, which supposedly kills with little physical destruction.
OK, now I went back and read the rest. Mea culpa!
We are. The neutron bomb’s neutron radiation converts the zinc-based galvanized coat of construction steel into Zinc-65, a gamma ray emitter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.