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Supercritical state
- The shock waves compress the fissile core of uranium or plutonium into what is known as a supercritical state. The physical basis of a nuclear weapon lies in creating this supercritical state. When a fissile nucleus is struck by a neutron, the nucleus splits and emits additional neutrons and a large amount of energy.
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Sep 29, 2016 · Modern nuclear weapons work by combining chemical explosives, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion. The explosives compress nuclear material, causing fission; the fission releases massive amounts of energy in the form of X-rays, which create the high temperature and pressure needed to ignite fusion.
May 5, 2024 · A nuclear weapon is a device designed to release energy in an explosive manner as a result of nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or a combination of the two processes. Are there treaties to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons?
- Concerns about the devastating effects of nuclear weapons have driven governments to negotiate arms control agreements. Some of the earliest ones i...
- The first test of a nuclear weapon occurred in the United States on July 16, 1945, at the Alamogordo Bombing Range in south-central New Mexico. The...
- The Soviet Union had the most nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The Soviet stockpile reached a peak of about 33,000 operational warheads in 1988...
- Implosion Design
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- Effects of Nuclear Weapons
- The First Bombs
1.1 Legend for Figure 1 Firing Set: a wiring system that sends a large electrical impulse to set off the detonators. Detonators: devices used to ignite the high explosive section of the weapon. High explosive: shaped charges made from materials such as HMX, RDX, and TATB. Tamper: a dense metal such as natural uranium that holds the core together by...
2.1 Legend for Figure 2 Explosive propellant: chemical explosive, analogous to but not the same as the high explosive in an implosion design. Tamper: not shown in the diagram but used for the same purpose and composed of the same material as in an implosion design. Subcritical mass and supercritical mass: exclusively uranium-235 for this design; pl...
3.1 Legend for Figure 3 Primary stage: fission implosion device as described in section 1, typically boosted with deuterium-tritium gas. Secondary stage: a fusion fuel charge composed of lithium deuteride, which contains at its center a cylindrical rod of uranium-235 or plutonium-239, and is surrounded by a casing of uranium metal. The fusion react...
Both plutonium-239 and uranium-235 have been used as nuclear explosives in fission weapons. Approximately ninety percent of the effort that went into making America’s first bombs was devoted to producing these two materials, which is no easy task. 4.1 Plutonium The world’s first nuclear explosion was achieved with plutonium, a man-made element prod...
The energy released by a nuclear explosion comes in several forms: pressure from the blast, thermal radiation, nuclear radiation, and an electromagnetic pulse. The damage inflicted by the various effects depends upon the size and type of the explosion. 5.1 Blast A large portion of the damage caused by a nuclear weapon is from the blast. The detonat...
United States “Trinity”: World’s first nuclear explosion: July 16, 1945. Location: Near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Yield: 21 kilotons. Fissile material used: Plutonium-239. Amount: 6.1 kilograms. Method of detonation: Implosion. Amount of high-explosive wrapped around plutonium core: 2268 kilograms. Method of production: Nuclear reactor at the Hanford...
Jul 21, 2012 · A nuclear weapon is a device which rapidly releases nuclear energy, either through fission (as in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or a combination fission and fusion (as in a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb). How do Nuclear Weapons differ from Conventional Weapons?
There are two types of nuclear weapons—fission bombs use fission alone, whereas thermonuclear bombs use fission to ignite fusion. Both types of weapons produce huge numbers of nuclear reactions in a very short time.
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.
A nuclear weapon is a explosive device that uses a controlled uncontrolled nuclear chain reacon to release huge amounts of energy. Nuclear weapons make use of one or two forms of interacons between atoms: Fission: uses a neutron to split a nucleus to release neutrons that split more nuclei to create a supercrical fission process.
