Weapon of mass destruction and its myths.

a reply to: SarK0Y

Hey sarKOY! I bow to your superior knowledge and understanding of how nuclear weapons work. You and me would probably get along great. I'm starting this new movement i think is perfectly suited to your intellectual prowess. You should join me together we can bring truth to this world. Just follow me to the below link where you can talk to people of similar intelligence and like mind!

www.tfes.org...

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The Little Boy codenamed nuke worked something like that, it just brought the two red subcritical masses labeled H and S together to make the explosion over Hiroshima.

Japan's cities were doomed by lab toys.

Watch the 2.5 minute Demon Core clip I posted earlier in the thread. It shows how the two subcritical masses became critical with a slip of the screwdriver, no mini-nuke plant needed. It's a Hollywood re-enactment, but based on actual, well documented events.

that accident serves rather good for my point. "mini-nuke plant" here means sophisticated mechanisms to re-calibrate device in autonomous mode.

a reply to: Zaphod58

even 15W is a lot of heat for encapsulated device w/o proper cooling + radiation continuously affects detonators.

a reply to: SarK0Y

Again, which is why nuclear weapons undergo scheduled maintenance and upgrades during their life.

You're comparing apples and potatoes. A nuclear reactor has continuous output, which generates a lot of heat, over a number of years. A nuclear weapon has very brief output, with very little heat until that brief output.

a reply to: SarK0Y

So what did they drop over Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Because my understanding is the B-29s of the time had a maximum bomb weight capacity of around 16,000 pounds.

How would they manage to drop something the size and weight of a nuclear reactor plant?

Mate nuclear warheads are a pretty complex piece of kit, but they do what they say on the tin, strip the paint right off your wall if you're not careful, but exist they do, and in numbers that could destroy our respective civilizations a few times over, as unfortunate as the case may be.

I'm just sad sarkoy doesnt want to join my intellectual think tank. We could use someone with your brains.

Look its obvious sarkoy that the issue of why nuclear weapons obviously need cooling is majorly confounding for everyone here. I say you and i pool our scientific resources and mastery together and go to town on this thread. You, with your master's degree from the University of Sum Dum Gai's online accreditation program and I with my doctorate from the Dontnoschit mailorder vocational correspondence course could school these fools! Whadaya say sarkoy! Lets team up and give em a fissile fusilade of facts!

originally posted by: SarK0Y
Japan's cities were doomed by lab toys.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Are you saying the schematic for the Little Boy is showing a "lab toy" and if so what is that supposed to mean? It worked, didn't it? Maybe it was a "prototype" if that's what you mean, versus some later models produced in quantity, but I don't see what that is supposed to prove.

that accident serves rather good for my point. "mini-nuke plant" here means sophisticated mechanisms to re-calibrate device in autonomous mode.

Certainly some engineering went into "Little Boy", but I don't see anything in that design which "re-calibrates" it in "autonomous mode". It's a fairly simple design which just brings the two subcritical masses together inside a chamber conducive to facilitating an explosion. I suspect any "calibrations" needed were done before the aircraft carrying the device took off, so you're not explaining yourself very well here, not that there's a good explanation for "nukes are fake" if that's what you're trying to say.

The Demon core wasn't designed to explode, it was designed for running criticality experiments and it certainly went critical.

originally posted by: SarK0Y
a reply to: Zaphod58

even 15W is a lot of heat for encapsulated device w/o proper cooling + radiation continuously affects detonators.

Where did you come up with 15W?

Radiation affects things but Uranium has a very long half life in the billion years ballpark, so there's not that much of it decaying to still have roughly half of it left after a billion years or so. Additionally, it's possible to design things to withstand radiation by various means if necessary.

You don't know much about the subject but you apparently think you know more than you do. This is a phenomenon researched by Dunning and Kruger, where you have placed yourself somewhere on the "low knowledge" end of the scale by your posts here. So, you might want to do more research from reliable sources, and increase your knowledge.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Observationalist
a reply to: SarK0Y

Radiation is no big deal. This guy eats some in this video.

Have you ever seen someone eat a banana? Bananas are radioactive, but the dose is small.

Dosage matters. If you wanted to test the lethality of radioactivity, you could play an alternate version of "Russian Roulette". Instead of filling half the revolver chambers with bullets (which has a 50% chance of death when fired at the head), you could expose yourself to 450 rad of radiation. Half the people exposed to that live, the other half die, that's why they call it the "LD50" dose. But the revolver death would be much quicker and less painful. That man in the video, Galen Winsor, never exposed himself to anywhere near 450 rad. Even if he had he would have had a 50% chance of living through that. It takes about double that to kill everyone exposed to it, maybe 800-900 rad.

studies-of-impact-of-ionizing-radiatio n-on-the-human-body

By the way, I'm a former radiation worker who worked with radioactive materials as part of my job, so I'm not scared of small doses, or I wouldn't have taken a job working with radioactive materials. Probably the most susceptible to small radiation doses are developing fetuses so I wouldn't recommend a pregnant woman to get even the exposure levels I got even though I thought it was relatively safe for me. It's the higher doses that are lethal, no doubt.

Scientists have died getting high doses. This 2.5 minute movie clip is a re-creation of the demon core accident in which a room full of scientists got exposed to radiation in an accident. All of them lived except the man closest to it and he knew he would die, which he did, nine days later. Some of the other scientists had problems later, some didn't.

The Demon Core 1945

The actual men in the room at the time: Louis Slotin (died nine days later), Alvin Graves (died 19 years later of a suspected radiation-caused heart attack, had cataracts and severe thyroid problems - he was three feet away), Stanley Kline (died of natural causes 55 years later - eight feet away), Dwight Young - (died 29 years later from a blood disorder that stunts development of white and red blood cells and an infection of the lining of the heart - six feet away), Guard Pat Cleary (KIA in Korea), Raemer Schreiber (died of natural causes at age 88 - 16 feet away), Theodore Perlman (Alive and in good health as of 1978 - 16 feet away), Marion Cieslicki (died of Leukemia, and his liver and spleen were abnormally large at autopsy - he was eight feet away). The bottom line, Louis Slotin (portrayed in this scene) really endangered his co-workers. The biggest mistake? Removing the shims (supports) and using a screwdriver instead - which slipped.

The scientist who died didn't think nuclear experiments were dangerous, and he had removed some of the safety protocols in the test accident which killed him by exposing him to about 1000 rad. (There were supposed to be some shims in place to prevent the upper half from getting too low...he didn't use them). Ironically the death of one of the guys who didn't think it was dangerous is one of the reasons we have the safety culture we do about radiation.

With Ingesting, it seems like there would be different doses to consider to be dangerous.
Im not gonna eat it but, if someone can and not get sick to the extent that we would expect then how certain are we with our expectations.

I’m still researching this subject but I found this in devoto radiation contamination and dirty bombs.
Doctors for Disaster Preparedness - LARRY GRIMM

Q:What is the biggest concern from a radiological dispersion device?

A: Two things: the irrational fear it can induce and the expense of cleanup. The possibility of the radiation actually hurting anyone is quite small. We fear what we do not understand, sometimes irrationally. The concepts of radiation are poorly taught in high school, and the only other radiation information we get has been sensationalized by Hollywood, politicians, and those looking to make a buck off of our lack of education. You can beat the fear by learning how radiation works and how to manage it safely (protection techniques). Fear and panic kill people, as any good Marine knows. Radioactive materials are chemicals. Sometimes it is easy to clean them up, sometimes hard. For example, cleaning oil off concrete is hard, but picking up chunks of metal is easy. Fortunately, it only takes a radiation detector to find the radioactive material, so it is easier to find and clean up than a non-radioactive chemical. Likely, the biggest problem will be economic disruption while cleanup takes place. Radiation dispersion devices are really disruption, not destruction, weapons.

a reply to: Observationalist
Galen Winsor is a bit nutty but not everything he says is wrong, he does know some things. With ingestion of radioactive materials, it matters whether or not the radioactive material can be absorbed by the body. He claims the stuff he eats can't be absorbed readily which is likely true, so all he gets is a minimal exposure to radiation as it passes through his body.

We know from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that ingesting contaminated milk and other sources of radioactive iodine causes thryroid cancer because thousands of people ingested contaminated milk etc and got thyroid cancer (partly because they took so long to notify residents of the disaster so they didn't even know they were drinking contaminated milk etc.) Fortunately, thyroid cancer is treatable once identified, so not many people died from it.

If Galen Winsor had any sense, he wouldn't drink any milk contaminated with radioactive iodine since it doesn't meet his criterion of passing through the body without negative consequences like the stuff he ate does. So, how the radioactive material interacts with the body, and whether it can be absorbed or not, might be as important as the dose.

a reply to: Zaphod58

You're too focused on small output of heat, but the're small space as well ..

The pit was warm to touch, emitting 2.4 W/kg-Pu, about 15 W for the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) core
----
The plutonium pit was 3.62-inch (92 mm) in diameter and contained an "Urchin" modulated neutron initiator that was 0.8-inch (20 mm) in diameter.

Needless to say, there ain't been mechanism to damp any parasitic chain reaction. In such event, heat output can happen n-fold increase, so chemical stuff out there will burn/explode. In short, nuke bomb must be connected to cooling system 24/7 + coolant agent damps residue radioactivity.

2nd moment, it was 1945 & nuke project of CCCP was a way behind of USA == so, why pentagon wasn't using nukes anymore??? they were shocked that much of cruelty of that weapon or there just wasn't stable toys to bless their enemies with?

a reply to: SarK0Y

Heat in nuclear weapons is an output of decay, or chain reaction. There is no chain reaction in a nuclear weapon until it detonates, so the warmth is caused by decay. Since it's such a small surface area there will be more heat felt. It still doesn't need massive cooling systems.

A source for these quotes would be nice too.

The first Russian detonation was in 1949. Things were still settling down after WWII at that point. There were calls to use them in Korea, but with the Soviet Union having their own weapons the fear was that they would escalate and use their weapons on allied forces in Korea.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Heat in nuclear weapons is an output of decay, or chain reaction. There is no chain reaction in a nuclear weapon until it detonates, so the warmth is caused by decay. Since it's such a small surface area there will be more heat felt. It still doesn't need massive cooling systems.

spontaneous chain reaction is rather possible == according to design, the're too little safety margin + as i said, the're too little space even for 15W.

A source for these quotes would be nice too.

The plutonium pit[22] was 3.62-inch (92 mm) in diameter and contained an "Urchin" modulated neutron initiator that was 0.8-inch (20 mm) in diameter. The depleted uranium tamper was an 8.75-inch (222 mm) diameter sphere, surrounded by a 0.125-inch (3.2 mm) thick shell of boron-impregnated plastic. The plastic shell had a 5-inch (130 mm) diameter cylindrical hole running through it, like the hole in a cored apple, in order to allow insertion of the pit as late as possible. The missing tamper cylinder containing the pit could be slipped in through a hole in the surrounding 18.5-inch (470 mm) diameter aluminum pusher.[29] The pit was warm to touch, emitting 2.4 W/kg-Pu, about 15 W for the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) core.[30]
en.wikipedia.org...

The first Russian detonation was in 1949. Things were still settling down after WWII at that point. There were calls to use them in Korea, but with the Soviet Union having their own weapons the fear was that they would escalate and use their weapons on allied forces in Korea.

looks like romantic/lyric reasons on contrary, there was very TECHNICAL reason to push CCCP to expose its real arsenals & make preemptive strikes before those arsenals had a chance to grow up.

originally posted by: SarK0Y
spontaneous chain reaction is rather possible == according to design, the're too little safety margin + as i said, the're too little space even for 15W.

The Fat man and little Boy bombs weighed about 10,000 pounds each, so think of the 15 watts attached to a large 10,000 lb heat sink; I don't see why that would need any active cooling. If you look at your source below, and the source I posted for Little Boy, both show schematics and neither of the schematics show any active cooling but the cores are part of a 5 ton device that shouldn't have any trouble handling 15W.

The plutonium pit[22] was 3.62-inch (92 mm) in diameter and contained an "Urchin" modulated neutron initiator that was 0.8-inch (20 mm) in diameter. The depleted uranium tamper was an 8.75-inch (222 mm) diameter sphere, surrounded by a 0.125-inch (3.2 mm) thick shell of boron-impregnated plastic. The plastic shell had a 5-inch (130 mm) diameter cylindrical hole running through it, like the hole in a cored apple, in order to allow insertion of the pit as late as possible. The missing tamper cylinder containing the pit could be slipped in through a hole in the surrounding 18.5-inch (470 mm) diameter aluminum pusher.[29] The pit was warm to touch, emitting 2.4 W/kg-Pu, about 15 W for the 6.19 kilograms (13.6 lb) core.[30]
en.wikipedia.org...

In the past I've bought some external hard drives that used about 10 watts, in a simple plastic enclosure with no active cooling. I thought some active cooling would be nice for those because they spin at 5000-7200 rpm and they could get rather warm, but apparently they could take the heat for at least a year which was the warranty period for external drives. Unlike the hard drive with moving parts, the nuclear core doesn't have any real "moving parts" (I'm not counting atomic movement), so all it has to do is just sit there and there's plenty of mass around it to absorb and dissipate the heat. You haven't posted anything showing the 15W core needed any other cooling than the passive cooling of being part of a 5 ton device which could easily absorb 15W.

a reply to: SarK0Y

And there was every reason NOT to at the time. At the start of Korea most nations were still rebuilding both civilian and military infrastructure from WWII. Military infrastructure was undergoing radical changes from the B-29 being one of the most advanced bombers in the world, to the B-36, which was a massive leap. They were also changing to jet fighters as well. The civilian leadership was tired of years long wars in multiple countries, and wanted to contain Korea to the peninsula. Using atomic weapons, there was an almost certain guarantee that it wouldn't stay in Korea.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The Fat man and little Boy bombs weighed about 10,000 pounds each, so think of the 15 watts attached to a large 10,000 lb heat sink; I don't see why that would need any active cooling. If you look at your source below, and the source I posted for Little Boy, both show schematics and neither of the schematics show any active cooling but the cores are part of a 5 ton device that shouldn't have any trouble handling 15W.

nuke core is just some kgs of stuff put tightly to each other & thermal expansion drastically affects the critical mass. + we have another part of story (Neutron feeder to kick-start a glee) ...

The 50 curies of polonium generated about 0.1 watts of decay heat, noticeably warming the small sphere.[5]
+++
The short half-life of polonium (138.376 days) required frequent replacement of initiators and a continued supply of polonium for their manufacture, as their shelf life was only about 4 months.[6] Later designs had shelf life as long as 1 year.
en.wikipedia.org...

So good for mass production, ain't it?

a reply to: Zaphod58

wars are bad for average Joe/Ivan/.., always bad. For ruling class, the're a lot of benefits.

Just weeks after the Second World War was over and Nazi Germany defeated Soviet Russia’s allies, the United States and Great Britain hastened to develop military plans aimed at dismantling the USSR and wiping out its cities with a massive nuclear strike. Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945. Winston Churchill’s Operation Unthinkable The plan, dubbed Operation Unthinkable, stated that its primary goal was “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire. Even though ‘the will’ of these two countries may be defined as no more than a square deal for Poland, that does not necessarily limit the military commitment.” The British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff underscored that the Allied Forces would win in the event of 1) the occupation of such metropolitan areas of Russia so that the war making capacity of the country would be reduced to a point to which further resistance would become impossible”; 2) “such a decisive defeat of the Russian forces in the field as to render it impossible for the USSR to continue the war.”
canadiandimension.com...

a reply to: SarK0Y

That's why they're called "plans". The US still has plans in the book to invade Canada that have been updated since the War of 1812. That doesn't mean there was any intention to use them.

a reply to: Zaphod58
plans become reality when economics & technology make them possible.

a reply to: SarK0Y

Uh, no they don't. Do you know how many plans we have on the books that are both economically and technologically feasible that have never once been executed? It's a lot.