[ RadSafe ] Testing bombs

[Jim Muckerheide]

Jim,

Plus the other 'contemporary' part of his question:  The issue of testing
hydrogen bombs is to confirm performance over decades due to potential
degradation of the cores and the decay of tritium.


ALSO: Note that "atomic bombs" are NOT chemical bombs!

They don't call it the "ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM" because they one time
exploded 100 tons of TNT on a tower at the site.

It's the same as "atomic power plants 'morphing' into "nuclear power
plants," there is NO technical distinction, just semantics.

[Chemical explosions (bombs or not) would be more "technically" molecular
combustion/explosion energy sources.]

Regards, Jim
=============

on 6/30/08 1:52 PM, Dukelow, James S Jr at jim.dukelow at pnl.gov wrote:

> 
> Nobody has really answered Dapra's original question, which has some
> contemporary relevance.
> 
> The difference between the U-235 bomb and the Pu-239 bomb is that the Pu-239
> was contaminated with other isotopes of Pu that have significant spontaneous
> fission rates.  If the process of assembling a critical mass was "slow" (say,
> tens of milliseconds), there would be a significant probability that the
> assembling critical mass would be "pre-ignited" by stray neutrons from the
> spontaneous fissions, leading to a lower yield -- a "fizzle".  The answer was
> to used carefully designed explosive charges to assemble the critical mass
> very quickly.  Until Trinity, the implosion design was theoretical and the
> test was need to give confidence that the weapon would work.
> 
> All of this is very nicely described in The Los Alamos Primer, by Robert
> Serber.  It is the annotated notes of the lectures that Serber gave to
> physicists and other arriving at Los Alamos to participate in the Manhattan
> Project.  The notes were published in 1992 and are currently available from
> Amazon.
> 
> This problem did not exist with U-235 and the physicists were quite confident
> it would work the first time.
> 
> The current relevance is that Iran, and earlier, North Korea is/were using
> both plutonium production and uranium enrichment to pursue nuclear weapon
> capability.  The weaponization issues remain with plutonium weapons and
> uranium weapons remain simple to implement once sufficient fissile material is
> available (although "deliverable" weapons may be more of an issue).
> 
> Dowell's linguistic distinction between nuclear (fission and fusion)
> explosions and atomic/chemical explosions is not standard usage, but is
> reasonable.  The nuclear weapons involve the release of the nuclear binding
> energy of the atomic nucleus, while chemical explosions release the chemical
> binding energy of the electron orbitals.
> 
> Hanford's weapons mission is over and it is probably not to hard to arrange
> tours of most of the facilities, although I haven't tried to do it.
> 
> Best regards.
> 
> Jim Dukelow
> Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
> Richland, WA
> jim.dukelow at pnl.gov
> 
> These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my
> management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl on behalf of Steven Dapra
> Sent: Sat 6/28/2008 8:49 AM
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Testing bombs
>  
> June 28, 2008
> 
> From time to time I have read that one of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs
> had to be tested before it was used, and that one did not --- that the
> engineers were so certain the latter bomb would explode that they didn't
> bother testing it.  I also read recently that hydrogen bombs must be
> tested.  Of these three types of bombs, which ones must be tested, and
> why?  For the one that did not have to be tested, why not?  (I don't have
> any bombs I want to test, I am merely curious.)
> 
> Steven Dapra
> sjd at swcp.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
> 
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the
> RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html
> 
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
> 
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the
> RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html
> 
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/