
#REDIRECT Nuclear weapon
[[Image:Nagasakibomb.jpg|thumbnail|250px|The mushroom cloud of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter.]] A nuclear weapon is a weapon that derives its energy from the nuclear reactions of fission and/or fusion. Even the smallest nuclear weapons are more powerful than all but the largest of conventional explosives. A ten-megaton weapon can destroy an entire city. A hundred-megaton weapon (although judged impractical) would set wooden houses and forests afire in a circle 60-100 miles (100-160 km) in diameter. Nuclear weapons have been delivered only twice in the history of warfare – both in the ending days of World War II ; the first such bombing was on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type device code-named "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, Hiroshima, and the last nuclear bombing occurred three days later; this second bomb was a plutonium implosion-type device code-named "Fat Man", dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Nagasaki. Nuclear testing accounts for the rest of more than two thousand nuclear detonations, chiefly by the following seven nations: United States, Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan. The declared nuclear powers are the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India, and Pakistan. In addition, Israel has both modern aerial delivery systems and there is evidence of an extensive nuclear program, though such has never been publically admitted (see: Israel and weapons of mass destruction). North Korea has stated recently that it has nuclear capabilities; Ukraine may possess an obsolete Soviet nuclear stockpile due to a post-Cold War clerical error. Iran and others may be attempting to develop indigenous nuclear capabilities. See the list of countries with nuclear weapons for more details. Non-weaponized nuclear explosives have been proposed for various non-military uses. ==Types of nuclear weapons== The simplest nuclear weapons derive their energy from nuclear fission. A mass of fissile material is rapidly assembled into a critical mass, in which a chain reaction begins and exponential growth, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. This is accomplished either by shooting one piece of subcritical material into another, or compressing a subcritical mass into a state of supercriticality. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is ensuring that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. These are colloquially known as atomic bombs. More advanced nuclear weapons take advantage of nuclear fusion to derive more energy. In such a weapon, the X-ray thermal radiation from a nuclear fission explosion is used to heat and compress a capsule of tritium, deuterium, or lithium, in which fusion occurs, releasing even more energy. These weapons, colloquially known as hydrogen bombs, can be many hundreds of times more powerful than fission weapons. More exotic nuclear weapons also exist, designed for special purposes. The detonation of a nuclear weapon is accompanied by a blast of neutron radiation. Surrounding a nuclear weapon with suitable materials (such as cobalt or gold) can result in the production of exceptionally large quantities of radioactive contamination. A nuclear weapon may also be designed to permit as many neutrons as possible to escape; such a weapon is called a neutron bomb. Hypothetical antimatter weapons, which would use matter-antimatter reactions, would not technically be nuclear weapons (as they would not be using energy derived from either nuclear fission or fusion), but bear noting due to a potentially higher potential energy by weight than conventional or nuclear explosives. == Effects of a nuclear explosion == The energy released from a nuclear weapon comes in four primary categories: *Blast—40-60% of total energy *Thermal radiation—30-50% of total energy *Ionizing radiation—5% of total energy *Residual radiation (fallout)—5-10% of total energy The amount of energy released in each form depends on the design of the weapon, and the environment in which it is detonated. The residual radiation of nuclear fallout is a delayed release of energy, while the other three forms of energy release are immediate. The energy released by nuclear weapons is generally measured in its equivalence to kilotons and megatons—thousands and millions of tons, respectively—of trinitrotoluene. The first fission weapons had yields measureable in the tens of kilotons, while the largest practical hydrogen bombs had yields around 10 megatons. In practice, nuclear weapon yields can be highly variable, from the sub-kiloton power of the man-portable Davy Crockett (nuclear device) warheads developed by the United States, to the impractical 54 megaton Tsar Bomba created by the Soviet Union as a display of political power. The dominant effects of a nuclear weapon (the blast and thermal radiation) are the same physical damage mechanisms as conventional explosives. The primary difference is that nuclear weapons are capable of releasing much larger amounts of energy at once. Most of the damage caused by a nuclear weapon is not directly related to the nuclear process of energy release, but would be present for any explosion of the same magnitude. The damage done by each of the three initial forms of energy release differs with the size of the weapon. Thermal radiation drops off the slowest with distance, so the larger the weapon the more important this effect becomes. Ionizing radiation is strongly absorbed by air, so it is only dangerous by itself for smaller weapons. Blast damage falls off more quickly than thermal radiation but more slowly than ionizing radiation. == Weapons delivery == The term ''strategic nuclear weapons'' is generally used to denote large weapons which would be used to destroy large targets, such as cities. ''Tactical nuclear weapons'' are smaller weapons used to destroy specific military, communications, or infrastructure targets. By modern standards, the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 may perhaps be considered tactical weapons (with yields between 13 and 22 kilotons (54 to 92 TJ)), although modern tactical weapons are considerably lighter and more compact. Basic methods of delivery for nuclear weapons are: === Gravity bombs === [[Image:Fat man.jpg|right|thumb|The first nuclear weapons, such as the "Fat Man" device, were large and cumbersome gravity bombs.]] No nuclear weapon qualifies as a "wooden bomb" — US military slang for a bomb that is trouble-free, maintenance-free, and danger-free under all conditions. Gravity bombs are designed to be dropped from planes, which requires that the weapon can withstand vibrations and changes in air temperature and pressure during the course of a flight. Early weapons often had a removable core for safety, installed by the air crew during flight. They had to meet safety conditions, to prevent accidental detonation or dropping. A variety of types also had to have a fuse to initiate detonation. US nuclear weapons that met these criteria are designated by the letter "B" followed, without a hyphen, by the sequential number of the "physics package" it contains. The "B61 nuclear bomb", for example, was the primary bomb in the US arsenal for decades. Various air-dropping techniques exist, including toss bombing, parachute-retarded delivery, and laydown modes, intended to give the dropping aircraft time to escape the ensuing blast. The first gravity nuclear bombs could only be carried by the B-29 Superfortress. The next generation of weapons were still so big and heavy that they could only be carried by bombers such as the B-52 Stratofortress and V bombers, but by the mid-1950s smaller weapons had been developed that could be carried and deployed by simple Fighter aircraft-bombers. ===Ballistic missile warheads=== [[Image:W87 MIRV.jpg|right|thumb|A MIRVed missile (such as the LG-118A Peacekeeper) can hold multiple nuclear warheads on one missile bus.]] Missiles using a ballistic trajectory usually deliver a warhead over the horizon. Mobile ballistic missiles may have a range of tens to hundreds of kilometers, while larger ICBMs or SLBMs may use suborbital or partial orbital trajectories for intercontinental range. Early ballistic missiles carried a single warhead, often of megaton-range yield. Due to accuracy considerations, this kind of high yield was considered necessary in order to ensure a particular target's destruction. Since the 1970s modern ballistic weapons have seen the development of far more accurate targeting techologies. This set the stage for the use of multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) with up to a dozen independently targetable warheads, usually in the hundreds-of-kilotons-range yield, on one ballistic platform. This allows for a number of advantages over a missle with a single warhead. It allows a single missile to strike a variety of apparently unrelated targets, or it can inflict maximum damage on a single target by encircling the target with warheads, as well as providing such an onslaught of warheads in conjunction with other tactical weapons that any form of defensive technology would be rendered useless. Soviet plans in the '70s were said to entail dropping one MIRV based warhead every ninety seconds to three minutes on major US targets for up to an hour. Missile warheads in the American arsenal are indicated by the letter "W"; for example, the W61 missile warhead would have the same physics package as the B61 gravity bomb described above, but it would have different environmental requirements, and different safety requirements since it would not be crew-tended after launch and remain atop a missile for a great length of time. ===Cruise missile warheads=== [[Image:Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile.jpg|thumb|right|Cruise missiles have a shorter range than ICBMs, but would be harder for an enemy to detect or intercept.]] A jet engine or rocket-propelled missile that flies at low altitude using an automated guidance system (usually inertial navigation, sometimes supplemented by either GPS or mid-course updates from friendly forces) to make them harder to detect or intercept could carry a nuclear warhead. Cruise missiles have shorter range and smaller payloads than ballistic missiles, so their warheads are smaller and less powerful. Rather than multiple warheads, which would have to be dropped separately as though the cruise missile were itself a bomber, each cruise missile carries its own warhead, although the B-1 Lancer bomber was designed to carry in its bomb-bay a rotating fixture for cruise missiles which resembles a set of MIRV warheads. Conventional cruise missiles sometimes use cluster munition payloads, though. Cruise missiles may be launched from mobile launchers on the ground, from naval ships, or from aircraft. There is no letter change in the US arsenal to distinguish the warheads of cruise missiles from those for ballistic missiles. ===Other delivery systems=== Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)_artillery_shell_was_the_smallest_nuclear_weapon_developed_by_the_USA.">Image:DavyCrockettBomb.jpg|right|thumb|The Davy Crockett (nuclear device) artillery shell was the smallest nuclear weapon developed by the USA. Other potential delivery methods include nuclear artillery shells, mines such as Blue Peacock, and nuclear depth charges and torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare. An atomic mortar was also tested. In the 1950s the U.S. developed small nuclear warheads for air defense use, such as the Nike_Ajax#Nike_Hercules. Further developments of this concept, some with much larger warheads, showed promise as Anti-ballistic missile. Most of the United States' nuclear air-defense weapons were out of service by the end of the 1960s, and nuclear depth bombs were taken out of service by 1990. However, the USSR (and later Russia) continues to maintain anti-ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Small, two-man portable tactical weapons (erroneously referred to as suitcase bombs), such as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition, have been developed, although the difficulty of balancing yield and portability limits their military utility. See list of nuclear weapons for a list of the designs of nuclear weapons fielded by the various nuclear powers. == History == Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki.">Image:Hiroshima aftermath.jpg|thumb|250px|right|The aftermath of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first nuclear weapons were created by the United States, with assistance from the United Kingdom, during World War II as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. While the first weapons were developed primarily out of fear that Nazi Germany would first develop them, they were eventually used against the Japanese cities of Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Soviet Union developed and tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949, based partially on espionage obtained from spies in the USA, and both the USA and USSR developed fusion weapons by the mid-1950s. With the invention of reliable rocketry during the 1960s, it became possible for nuclear weapons to be delivered anywhere in the world on a very short notice, and the two Cold War superpowers adopted a strategy of deterrence to maintain a shaky peace. Nuclear weapons were symbols of military and national power, and nuclear testing was often used both to test new designs as well as to send political messages. Other nations also developed nuclear weapons during this time, including the United Kingdom, France, and China. These five members of the "nuclear club" agreed to attempt to limit the spread of nuclear proliferation to other nations, though at least three other countries (India, South Africa, Pakistan, and most likely Israel) developed nuclear arms during this time. At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the state of Russia inherited the weapons of the former USSR, and along with the USA pledged to reduce their stockpile for increased international safety. Nuclear proliferation has continued, though, with Pakistan testing their first weapons in 1998, and the state of North Korea claiming to have developed nuclear weapons in 2004. Nuclear weapons have been at the heart of many national and international political disputes, and have played a major part in Nuclear weapons in popular culture since their dramatic public debut in the 1940s, and have usually symbolized the ultimate ability of mankind to utilize the strength of nature for destruction. ==Media== == Related topics== *More technical details **Nuclear weapon design **Nuclear explosion *History **History of nuclear weapons **Manhattan Project **Los Alamos National Laboratory **Nuclear testing **Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki **Soviet atomic bomb project **German nuclear energy project **Japanese atomic program **List of nuclear accidents (including nuclear weapons accidents) *Related technology and science **Nuclear physics **Nuclear fission **Nuclear fusion **Nuclear reactor **Nuclear engineering *Military strategy **Nuclear warfare **Nuclear strategy **Mutual Assured Destruction **Fractional Orbital Bombardment System *Proliferation and politics **Nuclear proliferation **Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty **Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty **Nuclear disarmament **Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 8 July 1996 **List of countries with nuclear weapons **List of nuclear weapons *Popular culture **Nuclear weapons in popular culture == References == * p. 54. Hans Bethe . ''The Road from Los Alamos''. Simon and Schuster, New York. (1991 ISBN 0-671-74012-1) *Glasstone, Samuel and Dolan, Philip J., ''[http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/nukeffct/ The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (third edition)]'', U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977. [http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/effects/effects.shtml PDF Version] *''[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/dod/fm8-9/1toc.htm NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of NBC Defensive Operations (Part I - Nuclear)]'', Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Washington, D.C., 1996. *Hansen, Chuck. ''U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History'', Arlington, TX: Aerofax, 1988. *Hansen, Chuck. ''The Swords of Armageddon: U.S. nuclear weapons development since 1945'', Sunnyvale, CA: Chukelea Publications, 1995 [http://www.uscoldwar.com/]. *Smyth, Henry DeWolf. ''[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Smyth/ Atomic Energy for Military Purposes]'', Princeton University Press, 1945. (The first declassified report by the US government on nuclear weapons) (Smyth Report) *''[http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/7906/index.html The Effects of Nuclear War]'', Office of Technology Assessment (May 1979). *Rhodes, Richard. ''Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb''. Simon and Schuster, New York, (1995 ISBN 0684824140) *Rhodes, Richard. ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb''. Simon and Schuster, New York, (1986 ISBN 0684813785) *Weart, Spencer R. ''Nuclear Fear: A History of Images''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. ==External links== *[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org Nuclear Weapon Archive from Carey Sublette] is a reliable source of information and has links to other sources and an informative [http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html FAQ]. [http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=367 Nuclear weapon simulator for several major cities] [http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=409 Fallout Calculator for various regions] *[http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/weapcon.htm Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons: Making the Connections] *The [http://fas.org Federation of American Scientists] provide solid information on weapons of mass destruction, including [http://fas.org/nuke/ nuclear weapons] and their [http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/effects.htm effects] *The [http://www.oism.org/nwss/ Nuclear War Survival Skills] is a public domain text and is an excellent source on how to survive a nuclear attack. *[http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/Example1.shtml Step by step scenario of a 150 kiloton bomb exploding in Manhattan] - click on the ''Next >>'' button at the bottom of each slide. *[http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/ Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum] *[http://www.nvccom.co.jp/abomb/indexe.html Hiroshima A-bomb Photo Museum] *[http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/na-bomb/museum/museume01.html The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum] * [http://www.nhk.or.jp/peace/english/index.html NHK Peace Archives] reports the program which makes the picture of the importance of the terrible disaster of atomic bomb and peace. * [http://www.ippnw.org IPPNW: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War] Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization with information about the medical consequences of nuclear weapons, war and militarization. Nuclear weapons lv:Kodolieroči ms:Senjata nuklear simple:Nuclear weapon th:อาวุธนิวเคลียร์ vi:Vũ khí hạt nhân
==List of nuclear powers== India is also a declared nuclear power and has tested a nuclear weapon. It should be added to the list of such countries, but I will leave it to the usual maintainers of this article to edit the page. :"The declared nuclear powers are, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan." I'm not sure what makes you think that, with this statement at the top of the article, India isn't listed asw a nuclear power. User:Nvinen 11:11, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs== ''"In every above ground nuclear detonation, there is a small chance that the very atoms of oxyegen and hydrogen in the air will ignite, spreading across the earth until the entire atmosphere has burned out."'' This was recently added to and reverted out of the article. It is obviously wrong, but I do know where it is coming from. When the bomb was first being developed there were a number of fairly promenant scientists who believed that the fission reaction would not stop one the bomb was detonated, and that the entire earth would be consumed in a chain-reaction atomic fireball. The U.S. went ahead with trinity despite these concerns (war pressures and all) and proved fairly conclusively that it wouldn't happen. Some variations of this theory still float around today in very inaccurate forms (e.g. what was added to the article). Maybe something about this should be added to the article or perhaps to the Manhattan Project article? -User:Lommer 21:26, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC) :done :The version I recall hearing "somewhere" was the minute concern that a runaway nitrogen/oxygen reaction could be started. Seeing as there ''isn't'' any hydrogen in the air, for all practical purposes, the nitrogen version is at least a tiny bit more plausible. :) User:Bryan Derksen 05:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) The paper http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0009204 mentions the report: ''The analysis of Ref. [3] gives convincing arguments against the possibility of a catastrophic chain reaction, based on well established physical principles. It concludes that it is unreasonable to expect a chain reaction propagated by nitrogen-nitrogen fusion reactions, and that an unlimited chain reaction consuming the atmosphere is less likely still. Other possible reactions, involving protons in clouds of steam liberated from the oceans, are also considered and argued to be less dangerous still. Konopinski et al. do note the 'distant probability' that the mode of propagation of the reaction in the atmosphere might be more complicated than their analysis allows, in which case its conclusions might not apply, and they suggest that the complexity of their argument and the absence of a satisfactory experimental basis for it makes further work on the subject highly desirable.'' ''[3] E. Konopinski, C. Marvin and E. Teller, Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs, Los Alamos Laboratory report LA-602. When the present paper was first drafted, this reference was archived and freely accessible at http://libwww.lanl.gov/la-pubs/00329010.pdf. According to the Los Alamos National Laboratory library, access is presently not permitted, following a directive from the National Nuclear Security Administration. I assume this is a consequence of heightened security concerns since 11.9.01.'' User:Patrick 11:39, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC) :"I assume this is a consequence of heightened security concerns since 11.9.01". All the LA-?? where on the web, but only briefly, a few weeks? maybe, then removed. However, that was BEFORE 11.9.01, roughty the year before, I state as witness.User:64.168.29.187 08:17, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::They are still on the web, but they have been restricted to only users from "select government agencies," even if they have been declassified. It is rather annoying, in my opinion -- a lot of this stuff has even been published before, much less declassified. But alas, such is bureaucracy. --User:Fastfission 17:58, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::: Actually cached by fast acting citizen, now at http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/index1.html User:64.165.202.73 22:24, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::: Thanks. I added some text with the link to Nuclear_explosion#Effects_of_a_nuclear_explosion.--User:Patrick 01:14, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Historically, this concern was first breached at the Summer conference held by Oppenheimer in Berkeley in 1942 (I believe Teller brought it up?). Bethe quickly showed it to be inaccurate, if I recall the history correctly, but it still stuck around as a lingering rumor (probably because it is rather poetic in a fatalistic and macabre sense, I assume). --User:Fastfission 03:21, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC) Since this was once thought of as fact and discussed by top scientists, although now it seems to be little more than fiction, doesn't it still merit at least being addressed and posted?--User:David Foster 10:22, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC) :Only if done responsibly. I've added the line "In 1945 there was some initial speculation among the scientists developing the first nuclear weapons that there might be a possibility of igniting the earth's atmosphere with a large enough nuclear explosion. This was, however, quickly shown to be mathematically unlikely enough to be considered impossible, though the notion has persisted as a rumor for many years." which I think does the job. --User:Fastfission 00:32, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Miscellaneous== "Atomic weapons, atomic bombs, thermonuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs are all alternative names for nuclear weapons." I don't think this line is correct - these are different kinds of nuclear weapons, not simply different names for them IIRC? -User:Stewacide ---- Actually that line is correct because all four of those names commonly refer to nuclear weapons in general - There is of course a distinction between pure fission devices and modern multi-stage fusion weapons, but I believe this destinction is adequately explained in the next paragraph. I thought this sentence was important to put right up front to show people that this entire article referred to devices which can be called any of these names. That way when you want to know about Hydrogen bombs as soon as you start reading this article you realize you are in the right place and do not need to find alternative information. As a side note - I was pleased to see this article made the brilliant prose page and is being actively edited. -- :Trelvis :"all four of those names commonly refer to nuclear weapons in general" would mean that a pure fission device is a kind of "hydrogen bomb"! I changed this. - User:Patrick 00:53 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC) ---- (clarka) Please leave in the link to Nuclear War Survival Skills. I didn't link in the concepts of civil defense or survivalism, but if we're going to talk about the weapons at least we should mention one source of defensive information. --------------- I've just created the neutron bomb page, which used to redirect here. These weapons are reallay very different from fission and hydrogen bombs, perhaps there should be a small bit about them here? I've also linked the one instance of 'neutron bomb' in this article to the new article. -- User:Lommer 04:14 16 May 2003 (UTC) ---- This article cites test numbers. From which year are these numbers? --User:Eloquence 07:31 19 May 2003 (UTC) ---- I find it unfortunate that this article has been hacked into incomprehensible pieces recently. Basically all of the science and facts have been relegated to sub articles (design and effects), leaving an over emphasis on piecemeal historical and cultural information. The break off of neutron bomb is an unfortunate side effect - since the new article is inferior to the original information about nuetron bombs within the context of other weapons designs. I think it would be a much more powerful article if we put the details of what a nuclear weapon is and what it does (design and effects) up front and the history, culture, politics and military use in supporting articles. Just thought I would share my vision for what this article should be in the hope that some clear vision could be imparted - unfortunately I can't spare the manpower to make this happen right now. User:Trelvis ---- I have moved a large part of the page to a new article history of nuclear weapons - and have reintroduced a large portion on the effects of a nuclear weapon back into the article. This is an attempt to make the article primarily a description of what a nuclear weapon is and what it does with clear cross links to related topics (history, who has them, what movies are about them, political issues, warfare and strategy, methods of delivery, etc) User:Trelvis 22:15 9 Jun 2003 (UTC) ---- I just restored the large portion of the article dealing with effects from the new article nuclear explosion. I think we should cut down some of the gory details (all the numbers and technical details) of this section in the main article and have more detail at the explosion article - but the content should not be cut altogether - eventually this main article should have a quick summary of what the other articles explain in detail.User:Trelvis 20:43 12 Jun 2003 (UTC) ---- ''The declared nuclear powers are... North Korea'' :I'd like to see some documentation for that claim. User:Raul654 20:39, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC) ::Firstly I would like to appologise about modifiying the article before checking here. I didn't realise it was a contensious issue. Anyway, I think this article [http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/01/10/nkorea.us/index.html] goes very close. It at least documents that they intend to be a nuclear power and that they have processed fuel rods, one of the key components. I will see if I can find a better source. User:Steven jones 23:14, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- Great article. I wonder, though, if more attention could be drawn to the human costs and horrors resultant from a nuclear bomb blast. (For example, all the horrible things that happened to people after the bomb in Hiroshima.) Of course, one would have to be careful about keeping NPOV, but I think an objective analysis of the human costs involved with these weapons would be in order. User:Mike Church 08:07, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) :I have added a Hiroshima aftermath picture. Feel free to adjust it to your liking. User:Raul654 16:18, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ==Introduction== I dislike the new introduction. I think a more general description of what they are is appropriate. As it currently stands, it gets too specific too quickly. User:Raul654 20:28, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) :Ok, I added fixed it up. It's a lot better now, but (IMHO) there is still room for improvement. User:Raul654 22:58, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) I fixed the grammar and the ambiguous phrasing. User:Bensaccount 23:03, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ==Neutrality== I dispute the neutrality of this article because of often reverts of phrasing edits. (User:Bensaccount) :Just because an article gets edited a lot doesn't mean its a NPOV violation. Please indicated what part of the article you think shows bias. User:Raul654 23:17, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) Giving human traits to a nation is a bias. User:Bensaccount 23:24, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ==Discussion== :Besides changing "The declared nuclear powers are the" to "Nuclear weapons are posessed by the" and removing two of my sentences (both actions which I disagree with), I didn't see anything else that was lost by reverting. If there was, I apologize.User:Raul654 23:09, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ::And for the record: "Nuclear weapons have only been used twice against people" - this is factually incorrect. There were people on the ground near most of the early atomic bomb tests, almost all of whom thereafter died of leukemia or cancer. User:Raul654 23:13, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) Im glad you can discuss after reverting. I also changed bad grammar by the way. "Anger" is an emotion. Nations dont feel argry. "Nuclear power" is political wording that doesnt belong in a definition. User:Bensaccount 23:17, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::In reality it really doesn't mean anything related see nuclear power :May I suggest that we move this conversation at Talk:Nuclear weapon instead? It seems a more appropriate place User:Raul654 23:20, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ==Summary== Ok, so to summarize - I accept the article, except for the changes made [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nuclear_weapon&diff=2753482&oldid=2753463 here]. *Bensaccount removed "A single nuclear weapon is capable of destroying a city. " **I think giving the reader an idea of the power of a nuclear bomb is extremely relavant to the article and definitely belongs in the introduction. *They only been used twice in anger -> twice on cities **Ben disputes the neutrality of "in anger". It's a common english phrase - to "fire guns in anger" - IE, with malice. It's incidental that they've only been used on cities twice. The idea is that they were used to intentionally kill people twice - IE, twice in anger. Again, I think it was better the way it was before. User:Raul654 23:27, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) Point 1. I removed because it was ambiguous (cities can vary in size). It can be put back in if you want. Point 2. I removed because of bias. (Ok you are comparing it to firing guns in anger, its still the same (IN ANGER) (???) ) User:Bensaccount 23:33, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) Point 3. See nuclear power :In the english language, it's pretty much accepted that the phrase "nuclear power" can refer either to the energy of harnessed atomic reactions, or the nations capable of building atomic weapons. I don't understand what's objectionable - anyone who knows english should understand what that phrase means, although linking to the wrong one (in this case, the former instead of the latter) is not a good idea. :As far as "in anger" - I still don't see what you are objecting to. It's another common english phrase, synonomous to "with malice". User:Raul654 23:41, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ::I know the meaning of anger and I dont know why you keep defining it and showing examples of its use and giving synonyms. I still object to the word being used (its biased to give human emotions to a nation). User:Bensaccount 23:55, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) :::I know that this is an old subject, but I wanted to comment on it. "In anger" is an idiom with a separate meaning from "anger" and does not involve giving human emotions to a nation. It is a phrase that is used to distinguish the use of a weapon with the intention of harming people. For example, "firing guns in anger" does not mean that the people firing them were angry. It simply distinguishes firing guns with the intent to harm from firing guns as a test, or for practice. In the same sense, nuclear weapons have been used twice "in anger." This does not imply that the United States was "angry," but instead distinguishes between the use of nuclear weapons as a test. This is a widely used and recognized English idiom and does not constitute POV. The way the paragraph is currently phrased still communicates the meaning but sounds odd. User:TomTheHand 17:46, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC) One more thing - do we want to link to weapon or bomb? I can't think of an instance where a nuclear weapon is not a bomb, so I think the latter (being more precise) is a better idea. User:Raul654 23:43, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) :I can think of only one nuclear weapon offhand that isn't a bomb; a fission-pumped X-ray laser, which was one of the proposed components of the original Star Wars ballistic missile defence system. It has a bomb in it, but the bomb isn't used for its direct explosive effects. None of these were ever actually built, though. Alternately, one could concievably consider a nuclear-powered attack sub or aircraft carrier to be a "nuclear weapon", but I think that's really stretching it. User:Bryan Derksen 23:49, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Ok, so we have one theoritcal weapon and attack craft that use nuclear power to move. If that's the best counter-evidence there is I think we're safe calling them bombs. User:Raul654 23:52, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ::It depends upon whether you want to use the dictionary definition of "bomb" or the conventional usage. In terms of dictionary definition (the first sentence of the "Bomb" article), anything that explodes is a bomb. In terms of convention it points out that only unpowered, air-dropped weapons are referred to as bombs. There are lots of nuclear weapons which aren't covered by the conventional usage, for example nuclear artillery shells, surface-to-air missiles with nuclear warheads, even air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles are not usually referred to as bombs. Personally I don't think it really matters. User:Nvinen 22:40, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) Ben - the article has been changed a lot. Is there anything you still object to, or can we remove the dispute tag? User:Raul654 00:01, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC) :Hi - Thought I would pop in. Not a member, so feel free to ignore... The reason you shouldn't interchangeably use weapon and bomb is militaristic in nature. A 'bomb' is normally applied to a weapons system that is air dropped. NWEPS that are air - dropped or launched usually have a prefix of B (i.e., B83). NWEPS that are mated to reentry vehicles, artillery shells, etc., usually are given a W prefix (i.e, W79). Therefore, its' technically inaccurate. -Shawn Hughes srh@esper.com 12/11/2004 ==Dirty bomb== I rewrote this paragraph: :Dirty bombs were first announced by the United States of America as neutron bombs intended to kill people while leaving facilities intact. The weapons were deployed in Europe during the closing chapters of the Cold War, for possible use in stopping a Soviet advance into Western Europe. More recently, officials of Western nations have feared insurgent groups might attempt to creat dirty bomb of provisional radioactive materials that are not sufficiently enriched to be used for a nuclear explosive. Officials also fear insurgents might attempt to attack a nuclear facility, using an existing site as an in situ dirty bomb ignited by sabotage or attack. This paragraph confuses neutron bombs with the present use of dirty bomb. Originally "dirty bomb" merely meant a nuclear weapon that would spread a lot of fallout, but over the last 10 years the term has come to mean a non-nuclear radiological weapon, comparatively much more easy for terrorists to assemble than a nuclear weapon. Neutron bombs use extremely high radiation doses from the blast in order to kill, and don't rely on the type of radiation damage that dirty bombs rely on. User:Tempshill 20:16, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Hi - Shawn again. Sort of. A 'neutron bomb' has the added military characteristic of a high neutron flux. The primary kill mechanism is still the ones in non-tweaked NWEPS. -Shawn Hughes srh@esper.com 12/11/2004 The term 'bomb' is not as good as the more general term weapon. 'bomb' has a connotation of a device dropped or used with a timing mechanism. The complex multiple warhead ballistic missiles now used for delivery are not reflected by the simplistic term 'bomb'. The word 'bomb' also has a sense which does not carry the damage done due to radiation - many people refer to a bomb thinking of the blast and incediary effects, but the addition of strong radiation stretches the usual usage. Weapon is the prefered term by governments and technical documents and we should stick with it. User:Trelvis 00:11, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC) :hear, hear. So what if the only usable nuclear weapons currently are bombs? Other nuclear weapons have been theorized including the X-ray laser mentioned above and EMP devices using nuclear explosives. To count these out is, imho, wrong. User:Alex.tan 03:25, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC) "Dirty bombs, ... can potentially render an area unfit for habitation for *years or decades* after the detonation." Shouldn't that be *potentially millions of years* ? User:67.118.116.87 03:16, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC) :No. Generally speaking, the more radioactive an isotope is, the shorter its half-life. So the really nasty stuff will decay quickly. And also, radioisotopes are just chemical elements like any other - they'll wash away with time and rain. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perfectly safe, for example, and the bombs that were dropped there weren't particularly clean. User:Bryan Derksen 05:38, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC) :As much as I know it, I don't think the problem with dirty bombs is high levels of radioactivity, but low levels for long times which deposit themselves into the food cycle and then accumulate in human bone or lungs or so forth. However I still find the notion of "millions of years" to be pretty unlikely. I think I will add the line, "In the estimation of most analysts, though, the effect would be primarily psychological, and potentially economic if a costly clean-up effort was called for." because that seems to be how most knowledgeable people regard them. --User:Fastfission 03:55, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Nuclear landmines and handheld nukes== I'd like to see some references for both nuclear landmines and handheld nukes. I've never heard of nuclear landmines and it doesn't sound credible to me. As far as hand-held nukes, in discussions on Al Queda, I've heard reporters say several times that the smallest nuke the US ever managed to build was 160 lbs -- not exactly handheld. If that's true, then this article is wrong. User:Raul654 14:19, May 2, 2004 (UTC) :Actually there are documented cases of nuclear landmines being deployed by the U.S. and NATO countries in Germany during the Cold War. These were not landmines in the usual sense - more often they were simply remotely detonated nuclear bombs designed to be left behind (possibly buried) during a retreat and detonated once soviet troops moved into the blast range. As far as hand-held nukes are concerned, while the U.S. never developed hand-held nukes (I believe the smallest warhead they ever deployed was the Davy Crockett (nuclear device), the USSR developed a low-yield warhead that could be fit in a briefcase. Many of these were produced, with the idea that agents carrying them could infiltrate the U.S. and then detonate them in large cities. For either of these topics some time spent googling should be sufficient to provide references -User:Lommer 21:15, 2 May 2004 (UTC) **I'm adding this a few months after the original comment, but I just wanted to note that it is not really known whether the USSR produces said suitcase bombs; as with many claims relating to the USSR (both before and after its collapse), there are a dearth of documentation at this point and conflicting opinions within the government over the question. --User:Fastfission 17:48, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC) :Nuclear 'landmines' do exist. There were two built by the US and one by the FSSR. NONE were one-man portable. The Davy Crockett can NOT fit in a briefcase, unless you possess a briefcase the size of two crockpots. :) The smallest NWEPS discussed in the public literature (besides the experimental device Ted taylor tested at NTS)is the smallest (155mm) atomic artillery projectile. Utilized the same physics package, but smaller footprint.Also not one-man deployable. There was NOT a former USSR NWEPS designed to be carried by spetsnaz. You guys do great work here, just wanted to help you. -Shawn Hughes srh@esper.com 12/11/2004 ==Fusion Nukes and Fission boosters confusion== There was a recent edit by an anonymous account to this paragraph (emphasis added): :[The difference between Fusion and Fission Weapons] is blurred by the fact that they are combined in nearly all complex modern weapons: a smaller fission bomb is first used to reach the necessary conditions of high temperature and pressure to allow fusion to occur. On the other hand, a ''fission'' device is more efficient when a ''fusion'' core first boosts the weapon's energy. The words fusion and fission were interchanged in the last sentance. This sentance is very confusing - I thought that no fusion weapons existed that were not detonated by fission reactions? If this is the case, the sentance in it's current form makes no sense. If, OTOH, the sentance was correct before the edit, it is completely redundant and makes no sense. -User:Lommer 19:20, 6 May 2004 (UTC) ::The sentence should say that fission weapons are more efficient with a fusion core - this refers to the fission-fusion-fission advanced thermonuclear weapon designs. This paragraph was originally together with a more detailed explanation of these advanced weapons which is now at nuclear weapons design - out of context that sentence may be confusing, but is correct. User:Trelvis 14:42, May 7, 2004 (UTC) : lommer - what that person is alluding to is the use of a boost gas in smaller NWEPS to enhance yield. The boost gas operates by fusion, which occurs in the center of the implosion-type weapons' core. Think of it as boosted fission. -Shawn Hughes 12/11/2004 srh@esper.com ::There are a few different possibilities: ::*An implosion-type fission bomb can be made more powerful (by a factor of about 2) by putting fusion fuel in the pit. ::*A staged thermonuclear weapon may place some fissile material at the center of the fusion fuel, so that the compression of the fusion material triggers the fission, further compressing the fusion fuel and triggering fusion ::*A staged thermonuclear weapon may surround the fusion fuel with fissile material, so that when the fusion explosion occurs, it triggers fission in this extra shell. ::I don't know which one the author was talking about. For details see nuclear weapon design and http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Teller.html this web site. --User:Aarchiba 05:00, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC) ==Suitcase bombs== Added note on suitcase bomb in the delivery methods section. : Why? They don't exist. -Shawn Hughes 12/11/2004 ==Civilian Uses of Nukes== I just realized that there is no information or links in this article pertaining to the (admittedly short-lived) civilian uses of nuclear weapons. I don't think an extensive discussion is neccesary here, but a short blurb with a link to an article that does cover the topic more in-depth is. For those who don't know, I'm not referring to nuclear power plants, I'm actually referring to bombs that were used for excavation and whatnot. IIRC, the Tennessee Valley Authority did some experiments with nukes (there's no mention of it on that page) and I believe that the soviets actually excavated a usable artificial harbour with nukes. As well I know that the US planned a similar harbour in Alaska that never went through. -User:Lommer 22:49, 28 May 2004 (UTC) :The article you're looking for is nuclear explosive. I'll add a link in this article, looks like there isn't one. User:Bryan Derksen 06:01, 29 May 2004 (UTC) : TVA did NOT do any testing of peaceful nuclear weapons. The only test shots were Vela nougat and sedan. PNE's were studied under the 'Plowshare' program. -Shawn Hughes 12/11/2004 srh@esper.com == Change of wording == I change a sentence in the first paragraph from: :Apart from test explosions, nuclear weapons have been used only twice - during World War II by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nagasaki. to :Nuclear weapons have been used only twice for war, by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nagasaki duringWorld War II. They have been used many hundreds of times, however, for the nuclear testing undertaken by many countries. I found the sentence "Apart from test explosions, nuclear weapons have been used only twice," to be something around the lines of "Apart from cows, red meat is not eaten very often," or something absurd like that (it seemed to imply that nuclear weapons have not been used often, when in fact they have been used hundreds, if not thousands, of times in "peace"). And I thought a link to nuclear testing would be useful in that summary, too. --User:Fastfission 18:52, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC) Also, I find "only" to be POV. At what point does the number of detonations cease to merit this prefix? 5? 10? 25? How about "nuclear weapons have been used only 500 times"? User:LX 13:48, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC) == Captions == Hi, folks. I took a crack at the captions today. Please look over them for accuracy and NPOV. I tried to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Captions in writing them. Thanks! -- User:Ke4roh 18:23, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC) :I'm not sure if saying that the Nagasaki mushroom cloud lifted nuclear fallout is technically correct; if it is, it's a wording that I've never seen used before. I also am not sure if the head of a mushroom cloud is a "radioactive fireball" technically speaking. But I don't see any NPOV problems, and I don't know for sure if those are accuracy problems, though I'll look through some reliable literature I have and see if similar wording comes up. (another thought I had, unrelated, is that there have got to be better fair use pictures of Hiroshima out there than the one with an ugly watermark on it) --User:Fastfission 21:26, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Caption NPOV == There is no need to include "strategic port city" in the description of Nagasaki. It may arguably have been considered as such by the US military establishment at the time but that is by no means the only valid POV. --User:Bk0 02:51, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) :And just what are you suggesting? -User:N328KF User talk:N328KF 03:14, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC) ::I suspect that he is suggesting that there are others who do not consider it to have been strategic. No more, no less. I can certainly see his point; IMO the issue of whether Nagasaki was "strategic" is a matter of opinion that should be left to the article on the bombing to work out in detail. User:Bryan Derksen 03:19, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::Yes, thank you. That is what I'm suggesting. This article isn't about WWII or the bombing of Nagasaki. --User:Bk0 03:29, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Sounds revisionist to me. -User:N328KF User talk:N328KF 03:23, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC) ::Howso? It is factual that there is sometimes ''dispute'' over the issue, and that it's not entirely clear-cut. It's not Wikipedia's place to settle that dispute, just to present the various sides in as NPOV a manner as possible. I would object if the caption described the image as being the "bombing of a non-strategic port". The caption of an image is hardly the place to achieve the kind of detail necessary for addressing such issues, so why ''not'' leave it to articles such as Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to deal with? User:Bryan Derksen 03:32, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) == Joules or Watts? == The article says: "1lb (0.45kg) of U-235 can release over 36 million million watts of energy." A user commented "This does not seem correct. A watt is a measure of energy per second. Should this be joules?" I have moved the comment here for discussion. User:Quadell – User:Quadell (User_talk:Quadell) (User:Quadell/Request for assistance)
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Nuclear weapon
[[Image:Nagasakibomb.jpg|thumbnail|250px|The mushroom cloud of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter.]] A nuclear weapon is a weapon that derives its energy from the nuclear reactions of fission and/or fusion. Even the smallest nuclear weapons are more powerful than all but the largest of conventional explosives. A ten-megaton weapon can destroy an entire city. A hundred-megaton weapon (although judged impractical) would set wooden houses and forests afire in a circle 60-100 miles (100-160 km) in diameter. Nuclear weapons have been delivered only twice in the history of warfare – both in the ending days of World War II ; the first such bombing was on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium gun-type device code-named "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, Hiroshima, and the last nuclear bombing occurred three days later; this second bomb was a plutonium implosion-type device code-named "Fat Man", dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Nagasaki. Nuclear testing accounts for the rest of more than two thousand nuclear detonations, chiefly by the following seven nations: United States, Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan. The declared nuclear powers are the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India, and Pakistan. In addition, Israel has both modern aerial delivery systems and there is evidence of an extensive nuclear program, though such has never been publically admitted (see: Israel and weapons of mass destruction). North Korea has stated recently that it has nuclear capabilities; Ukraine may possess an obsolete Soviet nuclear stockpile due to a post-Cold War clerical error. Iran and others may be attempting to develop indigenous nuclear capabilities. See the list of countries with nuclear weapons for more details. Non-weaponized nuclear explosives have been proposed for various non-military uses. ==Types of nuclear weapons== The simplest nuclear weapons derive their energy from nuclear fission. A mass of fissile material is rapidly assembled into a critical mass, in which a chain reaction begins and exponential growth, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. This is accomplished either by shooting one piece of subcritical material into another, or compressing a subcritical mass into a state of supercriticality. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is ensuring that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. These are colloquially known as atomic bombs. More advanced nuclear weapons take advantage of nuclear fusion to derive more energy. In such a weapon, the X-ray thermal radiation from a nuclear fission explosion is used to heat and compress a capsule of tritium, deuterium, or lithium, in which fusion occurs, releasing even more energy. These weapons, colloquially known as hydrogen bombs, can be many hundreds of times more powerful than fission weapons. More exotic nuclear weapons also exist, designed for special purposes. The detonation of a nuclear weapon is accompanied by a blast of neutron radiation. Surrounding a nuclear weapon with suitable materials (such as cobalt or gold) can result in the production of exceptionally large quantities of radioactive contamination. A nuclear weapon may also be designed to permit as many neutrons as possible to escape; such a weapon is called a neutron bomb. Hypothetical antimatter weapons, which would use matter-antimatter reactions, would not technically be nuclear weapons (as they would not be using energy derived from either nuclear fission or fusion), but bear noting due to a potentially higher potential energy by weight than conventional or nuclear explosives. == Effects of a nuclear explosion == The energy released from a nuclear weapon comes in four primary categories: *Blast—40-60% of total energy *Thermal radiation—30-50% of total energy *Ionizing radiation—5% of total energy *Residual radiation (fallout)—5-10% of total energy The amount of energy released in each form depends on the design of the weapon, and the environment in which it is detonated. The residual radiation of nuclear fallout is a delayed release of energy, while the other three forms of energy release are immediate. The energy released by nuclear weapons is generally measured in its equivalence to kilotons and megatons—thousands and millions of tons, respectively—of trinitrotoluene. The first fission weapons had yields measureable in the tens of kilotons, while the largest practical hydrogen bombs had yields around 10 megatons. In practice, nuclear weapon yields can be highly variable, from the sub-kiloton power of the man-portable Davy Crockett (nuclear device) warheads developed by the United States, to the impractical 54 megaton Tsar Bomba created by the Soviet Union as a display of political power. The dominant effects of a nuclear weapon (the blast and thermal radiation) are the same physical damage mechanisms as conventional explosives. The primary difference is that nuclear weapons are capable of releasing much larger amounts of energy at once. Most of the damage caused by a nuclear weapon is not directly related to the nuclear process of energy release, but would be present for any explosion of the same magnitude. The damage done by each of the three initial forms of energy release differs with the size of the weapon. Thermal radiation drops off the slowest with distance, so the larger the weapon the more important this effect becomes. Ionizing radiation is strongly absorbed by air, so it is only dangerous by itself for smaller weapons. Blast damage falls off more quickly than thermal radiation but more slowly than ionizing radiation. == Weapons delivery == The term ''strategic nuclear weapons'' is generally used to denote large weapons which would be used to destroy large targets, such as cities. ''Tactical nuclear weapons'' are smaller weapons used to destroy specific military, communications, or infrastructure targets. By modern standards, the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 may perhaps be considered tactical weapons (with yields between 13 and 22 kilotons (54 to 92 TJ)), although modern tactical weapons are considerably lighter and more compact. Basic methods of delivery for nuclear weapons are: === Gravity bombs === [[Image:Fat man.jpg|right|thumb|The first nuclear weapons, such as the "Fat Man" device, were large and cumbersome gravity bombs.]] No nuclear weapon qualifies as a "wooden bomb" — US military slang for a bomb that is trouble-free, maintenance-free, and danger-free under all conditions. Gravity bombs are designed to be dropped from planes, which requires that the weapon can withstand vibrations and changes in air temperature and pressure during the course of a flight. Early weapons often had a removable core for safety, installed by the air crew during flight. They had to meet safety conditions, to prevent accidental detonation or dropping. A variety of types also had to have a fuse to initiate detonation. US nuclear weapons that met these criteria are designated by the letter "B" followed, without a hyphen, by the sequential number of the "physics package" it contains. The "B61 nuclear bomb", for example, was the primary bomb in the US arsenal for decades. Various air-dropping techniques exist, including toss bombing, parachute-retarded delivery, and laydown modes, intended to give the dropping aircraft time to escape the ensuing blast. The first gravity nuclear bombs could only be carried by the B-29 Superfortress. The next generation of weapons were still so big and heavy that they could only be carried by bombers such as the B-52 Stratofortress and V bombers, but by the mid-1950s smaller weapons had been developed that could be carried and deployed by simple Fighter aircraft-bombers. ===Ballistic missile warheads=== [[Image:W87 MIRV.jpg|right|thumb|A MIRVed missile (such as the LG-118A Peacekeeper) can hold multiple nuclear warheads on one missile bus.]] Missiles using a ballistic trajectory usually deliver a warhead over the horizon. Mobile ballistic missiles may have a range of tens to hundreds of kilometers, while larger ICBMs or SLBMs may use suborbital or partial orbital trajectories for intercontinental range. Early ballistic missiles carried a single warhead, often of megaton-range yield. Due to accuracy considerations, this kind of high yield was considered necessary in order to ensure a particular target's destruction. Since the 1970s modern ballistic weapons have seen the development of far more accurate targeting techologies. This set the stage for the use of multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) with up to a dozen independently targetable warheads, usually in the hundreds-of-kilotons-range yield, on one ballistic platform. This allows for a number of advantages over a missle with a single warhead. It allows a single missile to strike a variety of apparently unrelated targets, or it can inflict maximum damage on a single target by encircling the target with warheads, as well as providing such an onslaught of warheads in conjunction with other tactical weapons that any form of defensive technology would be rendered useless. Soviet plans in the '70s were said to entail dropping one MIRV based warhead every ninety seconds to three minutes on major US targets for up to an hour. Missile warheads in the American arsenal are indicated by the letter "W"; for example, the W61 missile warhead would have the same physics package as the B61 gravity bomb described above, but it would have different environmental requirements, and different safety requirements since it would not be crew-tended after launch and remain atop a missile for a great length of time. ===Cruise missile warheads=== [[Image:Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile.jpg|thumb|right|Cruise missiles have a shorter range than ICBMs, but would be harder for an enemy to detect or intercept.]] A jet engine or rocket-propelled missile that flies at low altitude using an automated guidance system (usually inertial navigation, sometimes supplemented by either GPS or mid-course updates from friendly forces) to make them harder to detect or intercept could carry a nuclear warhead. Cruise missiles have shorter range and smaller payloads than ballistic missiles, so their warheads are smaller and less powerful. Rather than multiple warheads, which would have to be dropped separately as though the cruise missile were itself a bomber, each cruise missile carries its own warhead, although the B-1 Lancer bomber was designed to carry in its bomb-bay a rotating fixture for cruise missiles which resembles a set of MIRV warheads. Conventional cruise missiles sometimes use cluster munition payloads, though. Cruise missiles may be launched from mobile launchers on the ground, from naval ships, or from aircraft. There is no letter change in the US arsenal to distinguish the warheads of cruise missiles from those for ballistic missiles. ===Other delivery systems=== Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)_artillery_shell_was_the_smallest_nuclear_weapon_developed_by_the_USA.">Image:DavyCrockettBomb.jpg|right|thumb|The Davy Crockett (nuclear device) artillery shell was the smallest nuclear weapon developed by the USA. Other potential delivery methods include nuclear artillery shells, mines such as Blue Peacock, and nuclear depth charges and torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare. An atomic mortar was also tested. In the 1950s the U.S. developed small nuclear warheads for air defense use, such as the Nike_Ajax#Nike_Hercules. Further developments of this concept, some with much larger warheads, showed promise as Anti-ballistic missile. Most of the United States' nuclear air-defense weapons were out of service by the end of the 1960s, and nuclear depth bombs were taken out of service by 1990. However, the USSR (and later Russia) continues to maintain anti-ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Small, two-man portable tactical weapons (erroneously referred to as suitcase bombs), such as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition, have been developed, although the difficulty of balancing yield and portability limits their military utility. See list of nuclear weapons for a list of the designs of nuclear weapons fielded by the various nuclear powers. == History == Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki.">Image:Hiroshima aftermath.jpg|thumb|250px|right|The aftermath of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first nuclear weapons were created by the United States, with assistance from the United Kingdom, during World War II as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. While the first weapons were developed primarily out of fear that Nazi Germany would first develop them, they were eventually used against the Japanese cities of Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The Soviet Union developed and tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949, based partially on espionage obtained from spies in the USA, and both the USA and USSR developed fusion weapons by the mid-1950s. With the invention of reliable rocketry during the 1960s, it became possible for nuclear weapons to be delivered anywhere in the world on a very short notice, and the two Cold War superpowers adopted a strategy of deterrence to maintain a shaky peace. Nuclear weapons were symbols of military and national power, and nuclear testing was often used both to test new designs as well as to send political messages. Other nations also developed nuclear weapons during this time, including the United Kingdom, France, and China. These five members of the "nuclear club" agreed to attempt to limit the spread of nuclear proliferation to other nations, though at least three other countries (India, South Africa, Pakistan, and most likely Israel) developed nuclear arms during this time. At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the state of Russia inherited the weapons of the former USSR, and along with the USA pledged to reduce their stockpile for increased international safety. Nuclear proliferation has continued, though, with Pakistan testing their first weapons in 1998, and the state of North Korea claiming to have developed nuclear weapons in 2004. Nuclear weapons have been at the heart of many national and international political disputes, and have played a major part in Nuclear weapons in popular culture since their dramatic public debut in the 1940s, and have usually symbolized the ultimate ability of mankind to utilize the strength of nature for destruction. ==Media== == Related topics== *More technical details **Nuclear weapon design **Nuclear explosion *History **History of nuclear weapons **Manhattan Project **Los Alamos National Laboratory **Nuclear testing **Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki **Soviet atomic bomb project **German nuclear energy project **Japanese atomic program **List of nuclear accidents (including nuclear weapons accidents) *Related technology and science **Nuclear physics **Nuclear fission **Nuclear fusion **Nuclear reactor **Nuclear engineering *Military strategy **Nuclear warfare **Nuclear strategy **Mutual Assured Destruction **Fractional Orbital Bombardment System *Proliferation and politics **Nuclear proliferation **Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty **Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty **Nuclear disarmament **Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 8 July 1996 **List of countries with nuclear weapons **List of nuclear weapons *Popular culture **Nuclear weapons in popular culture == References == * p. 54. Hans Bethe . ''The Road from Los Alamos''. Simon and Schuster, New York. (1991 ISBN 0-671-74012-1) *Glasstone, Samuel and Dolan, Philip J., ''[http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/nukeffct/ The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (third edition)]'', U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977. [http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/effects/effects.shtml PDF Version] *''[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/dod/fm8-9/1toc.htm NATO Handbook on the Medical Aspects of NBC Defensive Operations (Part I - Nuclear)]'', Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Washington, D.C., 1996. *Hansen, Chuck. ''U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History'', Arlington, TX: Aerofax, 1988. *Hansen, Chuck. ''The Swords of Armageddon: U.S. nuclear weapons development since 1945'', Sunnyvale, CA: Chukelea Publications, 1995 [http://www.uscoldwar.com/]. *Smyth, Henry DeWolf. ''[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Smyth/ Atomic Energy for Military Purposes]'', Princeton University Press, 1945. (The first declassified report by the US government on nuclear weapons) (Smyth Report) *''[http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/7906/index.html The Effects of Nuclear War]'', Office of Technology Assessment (May 1979). *Rhodes, Richard. ''Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb''. Simon and Schuster, New York, (1995 ISBN 0684824140) *Rhodes, Richard. ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb''. Simon and Schuster, New York, (1986 ISBN 0684813785) *Weart, Spencer R. ''Nuclear Fear: A History of Images''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. ==External links== *[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org Nuclear Weapon Archive from Carey Sublette] is a reliable source of information and has links to other sources and an informative [http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html FAQ]. [http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=367 Nuclear weapon simulator for several major cities] [http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=409 Fallout Calculator for various regions] *[http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/weapcon.htm Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons: Making the Connections] *The [http://fas.org Federation of American Scientists] provide solid information on weapons of mass destruction, including [http://fas.org/nuke/ nuclear weapons] and their [http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/effects.htm effects] *The [http://www.oism.org/nwss/ Nuclear War Survival Skills] is a public domain text and is an excellent source on how to survive a nuclear attack. *[http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/Example1.shtml Step by step scenario of a 150 kiloton bomb exploding in Manhattan] - click on the ''Next >>'' button at the bottom of each slide. *[http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/ Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum] *[http://www.nvccom.co.jp/abomb/indexe.html Hiroshima A-bomb Photo Museum] *[http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/na-bomb/museum/museume01.html The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum] * [http://www.nhk.or.jp/peace/english/index.html NHK Peace Archives] reports the program which makes the picture of the importance of the terrible disaster of atomic bomb and peace. * [http://www.ippnw.org IPPNW: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War] Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization with information about the medical consequences of nuclear weapons, war and militarization. Nuclear weapons lv:Kodolieroči ms:Senjata nuklear simple:Nuclear weapon th:อาวุธนิวเคลียร์ vi:Vũ khí hạt nhân
Nuclear weapon
==List of nuclear powers== India is also a declared nuclear power and has tested a nuclear weapon. It should be added to the list of such countries, but I will leave it to the usual maintainers of this article to edit the page. :"The declared nuclear powers are, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China, India and Pakistan." I'm not sure what makes you think that, with this statement at the top of the article, India isn't listed asw a nuclear power. User:Nvinen 11:11, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs== ''"In every above ground nuclear detonation, there is a small chance that the very atoms of oxyegen and hydrogen in the air will ignite, spreading across the earth until the entire atmosphere has burned out."'' This was recently added to and reverted out of the article. It is obviously wrong, but I do know where it is coming from. When the bomb was first being developed there were a number of fairly promenant scientists who believed that the fission reaction would not stop one the bomb was detonated, and that the entire earth would be consumed in a chain-reaction atomic fireball. The U.S. went ahead with trinity despite these concerns (war pressures and all) and proved fairly conclusively that it wouldn't happen. Some variations of this theory still float around today in very inaccurate forms (e.g. what was added to the article). Maybe something about this should be added to the article or perhaps to the Manhattan Project article? -User:Lommer 21:26, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC) :done :The version I recall hearing "somewhere" was the minute concern that a runaway nitrogen/oxygen reaction could be started. Seeing as there ''isn't'' any hydrogen in the air, for all practical purposes, the nitrogen version is at least a tiny bit more plausible. :) User:Bryan Derksen 05:32, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC) The paper http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0009204 mentions the report: ''The analysis of Ref. [3] gives convincing arguments against the possibility of a catastrophic chain reaction, based on well established physical principles. It concludes that it is unreasonable to expect a chain reaction propagated by nitrogen-nitrogen fusion reactions, and that an unlimited chain reaction consuming the atmosphere is less likely still. Other possible reactions, involving protons in clouds of steam liberated from the oceans, are also considered and argued to be less dangerous still. Konopinski et al. do note the 'distant probability' that the mode of propagation of the reaction in the atmosphere might be more complicated than their analysis allows, in which case its conclusions might not apply, and they suggest that the complexity of their argument and the absence of a satisfactory experimental basis for it makes further work on the subject highly desirable.'' ''[3] E. Konopinski, C. Marvin and E. Teller, Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs, Los Alamos Laboratory report LA-602. When the present paper was first drafted, this reference was archived and freely accessible at http://libwww.lanl.gov/la-pubs/00329010.pdf. According to the Los Alamos National Laboratory library, access is presently not permitted, following a directive from the National Nuclear Security Administration. I assume this is a consequence of heightened security concerns since 11.9.01.'' User:Patrick 11:39, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC) :"I assume this is a consequence of heightened security concerns since 11.9.01". All the LA-?? where on the web, but only briefly, a few weeks? maybe, then removed. However, that was BEFORE 11.9.01, roughty the year before, I state as witness.User:64.168.29.187 08:17, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::They are still on the web, but they have been restricted to only users from "select government agencies," even if they have been declassified. It is rather annoying, in my opinion -- a lot of this stuff has even been published before, much less declassified. But alas, such is bureaucracy. --User:Fastfission 17:58, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC) ::: Actually cached by fast acting citizen, now at http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/index1.html User:64.165.202.73 22:24, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::: Thanks. I added some text with the link to Nuclear_explosion#Effects_of_a_nuclear_explosion.--User:Patrick 01:14, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) :Historically, this concern was first breached at the Summer conference held by Oppenheimer in Berkeley in 1942 (I believe Teller brought it up?). Bethe quickly showed it to be inaccurate, if I recall the history correctly, but it still stuck around as a lingering rumor (probably because it is rather poetic in a fatalistic and macabre sense, I assume). --User:Fastfission 03:21, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC) Since this was once thought of as fact and discussed by top scientists, although now it seems to be little more than fiction, doesn't it still merit at least being addressed and posted?--User:David Foster 10:22, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC) :Only if done responsibly. I've added the line "In 1945 there was some initial speculation among the scientists developing the first nuclear weapons that there might be a possibility of igniting the earth's atmosphere with a large enough nuclear explosion. This was, however, quickly shown to be mathematically unlikely enough to be considered impossible, though the notion has persisted as a rumor for many years." which I think does the job. --User:Fastfission 00:32, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==Miscellaneous== "Atomic weapons, atomic bombs, thermonuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs are all alternative names for nuclear weapons." I don't think this line is correct - these are different kinds of nuclear weapons, not simply different names for them IIRC? -User:Stewacide ---- Actually that line is correct because all four of those names commonly refer to nuclear weapons in general - There is of course a distinction between pure fission devices and modern multi-stage fusion weapons, but I believe this destinction is adequately explained in the next paragraph. I thought this sentence was important to put right up front to show people that this entire article referred to devices which can be called any of these names. That way when you want to know about Hydrogen bombs as soon as you start reading this article you realize you are in the right place and do not need to find alternative information. As a side note - I was pleased to see this article made the brilliant prose page and is being actively edited. -- :Trelvis :"all four of those names commonly refer to nuclear weapons in general" would mean that a pure fission device is a kind of "hydrogen bomb"! I changed this. - User:Patrick 00:53 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC) ---- (clarka) Please leave in the link to Nuclear War Survival Skills. I didn't link in the concepts of civil defense or survivalism, but if we're going to talk about the weapons at least we should mention one source of defensive information. --------------- I've just created the neutron bomb page, which used to redirect here. These weapons are reallay very different from fission and hydrogen bombs, perhaps there should be a small bit about them here? I've also linked the one instance of 'neutron bomb' in this article to the new article. -- User:Lommer 04:14 16 May 2003 (UTC) ---- This article cites test numbers. From which year are these numbers? --User:Eloquence 07:31 19 May 2003 (UTC) ---- I find it unfortunate that this article has been hacked into incomprehensible pieces recently. Basically all of the science and facts have been relegated to sub articles (design and effects), leaving an over emphasis on piecemeal historical and cultural information. The break off of neutron bomb is an unfortunate side effect - since the new article is inferior to the original information about nuetron bombs within the context of other weapons designs. I think it would be a much more powerful article if we put the details of what a nuclear weapon is and what it does (design and effects) up front and the history, culture, politics and military use in supporting articles. Just thought I would share my vision for what this article should be in the hope that some clear vision could be imparted - unfortunately I can't spare the manpower to make this happen right now. User:Trelvis ---- I have moved a large part of the page to a new article history of nuclear weapons - and have reintroduced a large portion on the effects of a nuclear weapon back into the article. This is an attempt to make the article primarily a description of what a nuclear weapon is and what it does with clear cross links to related topics (history, who has them, what movies are about them, political issues, warfare and strategy, methods of delivery, etc) User:Trelvis 22:15 9 Jun 2003 (UTC) ---- I just restored the large portion of the article dealing with effects from the new article nuclear explosion. I think we should cut down some of the gory details (all the numbers and technical details) of this section in the main article and have more detail at the explosion article - but the content should not be cut altogether - eventually this main article should have a quick summary of what the other articles explain in detail.User:Trelvis 20:43 12 Jun 2003 (UTC) ---- ''The declared nuclear powers are... North Korea'' :I'd like to see some documentation for that claim. User:Raul654 20:39, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC) ::Firstly I would like to appologise about modifiying the article before checking here. I didn't realise it was a contensious issue. Anyway, I think this article [http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/01/10/nkorea.us/index.html] goes very close. It at least documents that they intend to be a nuclear power and that they have processed fuel rods, one of the key components. I will see if I can find a better source. User:Steven jones 23:14, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- Great article. I wonder, though, if more attention could be drawn to the human costs and horrors resultant from a nuclear bomb blast. (For example, all the horrible things that happened to people after the bomb in Hiroshima.) Of course, one would have to be careful about keeping NPOV, but I think an objective analysis of the human costs involved with these weapons would be in order. User:Mike Church 08:07, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) :I have added a Hiroshima aftermath picture. Feel free to adjust it to your liking. User:Raul654 16:18, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ==Introduction== I dislike the new introduction. I think a more general description of what they are is appropriate. As it currently stands, it gets too specific too quickly. User:Raul654 20:28, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) :Ok, I added fixed it up. It's a lot better now, but (IMHO) there is still room for improvement. User:Raul654 22:58, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) I fixed the grammar and the ambiguous phrasing. User:Bensaccount 23:03, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ==Neutrality== I dispute the neutrality of this article because of often reverts of phrasing edits. (User:Bensaccount) :Just because an article gets edited a lot doesn't mean its a NPOV violation. Please indicated what part of the article you think shows bias. User:Raul654 23:17, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) Giving human traits to a nation is a bias. User:Bensaccount 23:24, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ==Discussion== :Besides changing "The declared nuclear powers are the" to "Nuclear weapons are posessed by the" and removing two of my sentences (both actions which I disagree with), I didn't see anything else that was lost by reverting. If there was, I apologize.User:Raul654 23:09, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ::And for the record: "Nuclear weapons have only been used twice against people" - this is factually incorrect. There were people on the ground near most of the early atomic bomb tests, almost all of whom thereafter died of leukemia or cancer. User:Raul654 23:13, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) Im glad you can discuss after reverting. I also changed bad grammar by the way. "Anger" is an emotion. Nations dont feel argry. "Nuclear power" is political wording that doesnt belong in a definition. User:Bensaccount 23:17, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::In reality it really doesn't mean anything related see nuclear power :May I suggest that we move this conversation at Talk:Nuclear weapon instead? It seems a more appropriate place User:Raul654 23:20, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ==Summary== Ok, so to summarize - I accept the article, except for the changes made [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nuclear_weapon&diff=2753482&oldid=2753463 here]. *Bensaccount removed "A single nuclear weapon is capable of destroying a city. " **I think giving the reader an idea of the power of a nuclear bomb is extremely relavant to the article and definitely belongs in the introduction. *They only been used twice in anger -> twice on cities **Ben disputes the neutrality of "in anger". It's a common english phrase - to "fire guns in anger" - IE, with malice. It's incidental that they've only been used on cities twice. The idea is that they were used to intentionally kill people twice - IE, twice in anger. Again, I think it was better the way it was before. User:Raul654 23:27, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) Point 1. I removed because it was ambiguous (cities can vary in size). It can be put back in if you want. Point 2. I removed because of bias. (Ok you are comparing it to firing guns in anger, its still the same (IN ANGER) (???) ) User:Bensaccount 23:33, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) Point 3. See nuclear power :In the english language, it's pretty much accepted that the phrase "nuclear power" can refer either to the energy of harnessed atomic reactions, or the nations capable of building atomic weapons. I don't understand what's objectionable - anyone who knows english should understand what that phrase means, although linking to the wrong one (in this case, the former instead of the latter) is not a good idea. :As far as "in anger" - I still don't see what you are objecting to. It's another common english phrase, synonomous to "with malice". User:Raul654 23:41, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ::I know the meaning of anger and I dont know why you keep defining it and showing examples of its use and giving synonyms. I still object to the word being used (its biased to give human emotions to a nation). User:Bensaccount 23:55, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) :::I know that this is an old subject, but I wanted to comment on it. "In anger" is an idiom with a separate meaning from "anger" and does not involve giving human emotions to a nation. It is a phrase that is used to distinguish the use of a weapon with the intention of harming people. For example, "firing guns in anger" does not mean that the people firing them were angry. It simply distinguishes firing guns with the intent to harm from firing guns as a test, or for practice. In the same sense, nuclear weapons have been used twice "in anger." This does not imply that the United States was "angry," but instead distinguishes between the use of nuclear weapons as a test. This is a widely used and recognized English idiom and does not constitute POV. The way the paragraph is currently phrased still communicates the meaning but sounds odd. User:TomTheHand 17:46, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC) One more thing - do we want to link to weapon or bomb? I can't think of an instance where a nuclear weapon is not a bomb, so I think the latter (being more precise) is a better idea. User:Raul654 23:43, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) :I can think of only one nuclear weapon offhand that isn't a bomb; a fission-pumped X-ray laser, which was one of the proposed components of the original Star Wars ballistic missile defence system. It has a bomb in it, but the bomb isn't used for its direct explosive effects. None of these were ever actually built, though. Alternately, one could concievably consider a nuclear-powered attack sub or aircraft carrier to be a "nuclear weapon", but I think that's really stretching it. User:Bryan Derksen 23:49, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Ok, so we have one theoritcal weapon and attack craft that use nuclear power to move. If that's the best counter-evidence there is I think we're safe calling them bombs. User:Raul654 23:52, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC) ::It depends upon whether you want to use the dictionary definition of "bomb" or the conventional usage. In terms of dictionary definition (the first sentence of the "Bomb" article), anything that explodes is a bomb. In terms of convention it points out that only unpowered, air-dropped weapons are referred to as bombs. There are lots of nuclear weapons which aren't covered by the conventional usage, for example nuclear artillery shells, surface-to-air missiles with nuclear warheads, even air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles are not usually referred to as bombs. Personally I don't think it really matters. User:Nvinen 22:40, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC) Ben - the article has been changed a lot. Is there anything you still object to, or can we remove the dispute tag? User:Raul654 00:01, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC) :Hi - Thought I would pop in. Not a member, so feel free to ignore... The reason you shouldn't interchangeably use weapon and bomb is militaristic in nature. A 'bomb' is normally applied to a weapons system that is air dropped. NWEPS that are air - dropped or launched usually have a prefix of B (i.e., B83). NWEPS that are mated to reentry vehicles, artillery shells, etc., usually are given a W prefix (i.e, W79). Therefore, its' technically inaccurate. -Shawn Hughes srh@esper.com 12/11/2004 ==Dirty bomb== I rewrote this paragraph: :Dirty bombs were first announced by the United States of America as neutron bombs intended to kill people while leaving facilities intact. The weapons were deployed in Europe during the closing chapters of the Cold War, for possible use in stopping a Soviet advance into Western Europe. More recently, officials of Western nations have feared insurgent groups might attempt to creat dirty bomb of provisional radioactive materials that are not sufficiently enriched to be used for a nuclear explosive. Officials also fear insurgents might attempt to attack a nuclear facility, using an existing site as an in situ dirty bomb ignited by sabotage or attack. This paragraph confuses neutron bombs with the present use of dirty bomb. Originally "dirty bomb" merely meant a nuclear weapon that would spread a lot of fallout, but over the last 10 years the term has come to mean a non-nuclear radiological weapon, comparatively much more easy for terrorists to assemble than a nuclear weapon. Neutron bombs use extremely high radiation doses from the blast in order to kill, and don't rely on the type of radiation damage that dirty bombs rely on. User:Tempshill 20:16, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Hi - Shawn again. Sort of. A 'neutron bomb' has the added military characteristic of a high neutron flux. The primary kill mechanism is still the ones in non-tweaked NWEPS. -Shawn Hughes srh@esper.com 12/11/2004 The term 'bomb' is not as good as the more general term weapon. 'bomb' has a connotation of a device dropped or used with a timing mechanism. The complex multiple warhead ballistic missiles now used for delivery are not reflected by the simplistic term 'bomb'. The word 'bomb' also has a sense which does not carry the damage done due to radiation - many people refer to a bomb thinking of the blast and incediary effects, but the addition of strong radiation stretches the usual usage. Weapon is the prefered term by governments and technical documents and we should stick with it. User:Trelvis 00:11, Mar 16, 2004 (UTC) :hear, hear. So what if the only usable nuclear weapons currently are bombs? Other nuclear weapons have been theorized including the X-ray laser mentioned above and EMP devices using nuclear explosives. To count these out is, imho, wrong. User:Alex.tan 03:25, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC) "Dirty bombs, ... can potentially render an area unfit for habitation for *years or decades* after the detonation." Shouldn't that be *potentially millions of years* ? User:67.118.116.87 03:16, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC) :No. Generally speaking, the more radioactive an isotope is, the shorter its half-life. So the really nasty stuff will decay quickly. And also, radioisotopes are just chemical elements like any other - they'll wash away with time and rain. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perfectly safe, for example, and the bombs that were dropped there weren't particularly clean. User:Bryan Derksen 05:38, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC) :As much as I know it, I don't think the problem with dirty bombs is high levels of radioactivity, but low levels for long times which deposit themselves into the food cycle and then accumulate in human bone or lungs or so forth. However I still find the notion of "millions of years" to be pretty unlikely. I think I will add the line, "In the estimation of most analysts, though, the effect would be primarily psychological, and potentially economic if a costly clean-up effort was called for." because that seems to be how most knowledgeable people regard them. --User:Fastfission 03:55, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Nuclear landmines and handheld nukes== I'd like to see some references for both nuclear landmines and handheld nukes. I've never heard of nuclear landmines and it doesn't sound credible to me. As far as hand-held nukes, in discussions on Al Queda, I've heard reporters say several times that the smallest nuke the US ever managed to build was 160 lbs -- not exactly handheld. If that's true, then this article is wrong. User:Raul654 14:19, May 2, 2004 (UTC) :Actually there are documented cases of nuclear landmines being deployed by the U.S. and NATO countries in Germany during the Cold War. These were not landmines in the usual sense - more often they were simply remotely detonated nuclear bombs designed to be left behind (possibly buried) during a retreat and detonated once soviet troops moved into the blast range. As far as hand-held nukes are concerned, while the U.S. never developed hand-held nukes (I believe the smallest warhead they ever deployed was the Davy Crockett (nuclear device), the USSR developed a low-yield warhead that could be fit in a briefcase. Many of these were produced, with the idea that agents carrying them could infiltrate the U.S. and then detonate them in large cities. For either of these topics some time spent googling should be sufficient to provide references -User:Lommer 21:15, 2 May 2004 (UTC) **I'm adding this a few months after the original comment, but I just wanted to note that it is not really known whether the USSR produces said suitcase bombs; as with many claims relating to the USSR (both before and after its collapse), there are a dearth of documentation at this point and conflicting opinions within the government over the question. --User:Fastfission 17:48, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC) :Nuclear 'landmines' do exist. There were two built by the US and one by the FSSR. NONE were one-man portable. The Davy Crockett can NOT fit in a briefcase, unless you possess a briefcase the size of two crockpots. :) The smallest NWEPS discussed in the public literature (besides the experimental device Ted taylor tested at NTS)is the smallest (155mm) atomic artillery projectile. Utilized the same physics package, but smaller footprint.Also not one-man deployable. There was NOT a former USSR NWEPS designed to be carried by spetsnaz. You guys do great work here, just wanted to help you. -Shawn Hughes srh@esper.com 12/11/2004 ==Fusion Nukes and Fission boosters confusion== There was a recent edit by an anonymous account to this paragraph (emphasis added): :[The difference between Fusion and Fission Weapons] is blurred by the fact that they are combined in nearly all complex modern weapons: a smaller fission bomb is first used to reach the necessary conditions of high temperature and pressure to allow fusion to occur. On the other hand, a ''fission'' device is more efficient when a ''fusion'' core first boosts the weapon's energy. The words fusion and fission were interchanged in the last sentance. This sentance is very confusing - I thought that no fusion weapons existed that were not detonated by fission reactions? If this is the case, the sentance in it's current form makes no sense. If, OTOH, the sentance was correct before the edit, it is completely redundant and makes no sense. -User:Lommer 19:20, 6 May 2004 (UTC) ::The sentence should say that fission weapons are more efficient with a fusion core - this refers to the fission-fusion-fission advanced thermonuclear weapon designs. This paragraph was originally together with a more detailed explanation of these advanced weapons which is now at nuclear weapons design - out of context that sentence may be confusing, but is correct. User:Trelvis 14:42, May 7, 2004 (UTC) : lommer - what that person is alluding to is the use of a boost gas in smaller NWEPS to enhance yield. The boost gas operates by fusion, which occurs in the center of the implosion-type weapons' core. Think of it as boosted fission. -Shawn Hughes 12/11/2004 srh@esper.com ::There are a few different possibilities: ::*An implosion-type fission bomb can be made more powerful (by a factor of about 2) by putting fusion fuel in the pit. ::*A staged thermonuclear weapon may place some fissile material at the center of the fusion fuel, so that the compression of the fusion material triggers the fission, further compressing the fusion fuel and triggering fusion ::*A staged thermonuclear weapon may surround the fusion fuel with fissile material, so that when the fusion explosion occurs, it triggers fission in this extra shell. ::I don't know which one the author was talking about. For details see nuclear weapon design and http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Teller.html this web site. --User:Aarchiba 05:00, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC) ==Suitcase bombs== Added note on suitcase bomb in the delivery methods section. : Why? They don't exist. -Shawn Hughes 12/11/2004 ==Civilian Uses of Nukes== I just realized that there is no information or links in this article pertaining to the (admittedly short-lived) civilian uses of nuclear weapons. I don't think an extensive discussion is neccesary here, but a short blurb with a link to an article that does cover the topic more in-depth is. For those who don't know, I'm not referring to nuclear power plants, I'm actually referring to bombs that were used for excavation and whatnot. IIRC, the Tennessee Valley Authority did some experiments with nukes (there's no mention of it on that page) and I believe that the soviets actually excavated a usable artificial harbour with nukes. As well I know that the US planned a similar harbour in Alaska that never went through. -User:Lommer 22:49, 28 May 2004 (UTC) :The article you're looking for is nuclear explosive. I'll add a link in this article, looks like there isn't one. User:Bryan Derksen 06:01, 29 May 2004 (UTC) : TVA did NOT do any testing of peaceful nuclear weapons. The only test shots were Vela nougat and sedan. PNE's were studied under the 'Plowshare' program. -Shawn Hughes 12/11/2004 srh@esper.com == Change of wording == I change a sentence in the first paragraph from: :Apart from test explosions, nuclear weapons have been used only twice - during World War II by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nagasaki. to :Nuclear weapons have been used only twice for war, by the United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nagasaki duringWorld War II. They have been used many hundreds of times, however, for the nuclear testing undertaken by many countries. I found the sentence "Apart from test explosions, nuclear weapons have been used only twice," to be something around the lines of "Apart from cows, red meat is not eaten very often," or something absurd like that (it seemed to imply that nuclear weapons have not been used often, when in fact they have been used hundreds, if not thousands, of times in "peace"). And I thought a link to nuclear testing would be useful in that summary, too. --User:Fastfission 18:52, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC) Also, I find "only" to be POV. At what point does the number of detonations cease to merit this prefix? 5? 10? 25? How about "nuclear weapons have been used only 500 times"? User:LX 13:48, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC) == Captions == Hi, folks. I took a crack at the captions today. Please look over them for accuracy and NPOV. I tried to follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Captions in writing them. Thanks! -- User:Ke4roh 18:23, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC) :I'm not sure if saying that the Nagasaki mushroom cloud lifted nuclear fallout is technically correct; if it is, it's a wording that I've never seen used before. I also am not sure if the head of a mushroom cloud is a "radioactive fireball" technically speaking. But I don't see any NPOV problems, and I don't know for sure if those are accuracy problems, though I'll look through some reliable literature I have and see if similar wording comes up. (another thought I had, unrelated, is that there have got to be better fair use pictures of Hiroshima out there than the one with an ugly watermark on it) --User:Fastfission 21:26, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Caption NPOV == There is no need to include "strategic port city" in the description of Nagasaki. It may arguably have been considered as such by the US military establishment at the time but that is by no means the only valid POV. --User:Bk0 02:51, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) :And just what are you suggesting? -User:N328KF User talk:N328KF 03:14, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC) ::I suspect that he is suggesting that there are others who do not consider it to have been strategic. No more, no less. I can certainly see his point; IMO the issue of whether Nagasaki was "strategic" is a matter of opinion that should be left to the article on the bombing to work out in detail. User:Bryan Derksen 03:19, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::Yes, thank you. That is what I'm suggesting. This article isn't about WWII or the bombing of Nagasaki. --User:Bk0 03:29, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Sounds revisionist to me. -User:N328KF User talk:N328KF 03:23, 2004 Oct 12 (UTC) ::Howso? It is factual that there is sometimes ''dispute'' over the issue, and that it's not entirely clear-cut. It's not Wikipedia's place to settle that dispute, just to present the various sides in as NPOV a manner as possible. I would object if the caption described the image as being the "bombing of a non-strategic port". The caption of an image is hardly the place to achieve the kind of detail necessary for addressing such issues, so why ''not'' leave it to articles such as Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to deal with? User:Bryan Derksen 03:32, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC) == Joules or Watts? == The article says: "1lb (0.45kg) of U-235 can release over 36 million million watts of energy." A user commented "This does not seem correct. A watt is a measure of energy per second. Should this be joules?" I have moved the comment here for discussion. User:Quadell – User:Quadell (User_talk:Quadell) (User:Quadell/Request for assistance)
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