DarkRange55
Enlightened
- Oct 15, 2023
- 1,780
Just some musings…
Xenon's destructive capabilities are almost nonexistent. Splitting xenon releases only about one third as much energy per nucleon (or 1/ as much per atom) as splitting uranium. Furthermore, uranium 235 releases neutrons when it is split, which can lead to a chain reaction, while xenon does not release neutrons (or at least not enough to sustain a chain reaction), and it is a great absorber of neutrons. And the fusion of hydrogen releases almost 25 times as much energy per nucleon as the splitting of Xenon.
Combined, the United States and Russia now possess approximately 88 percent of the world's total inventory of nuclear weapons.
The warheads on just one US nuclear-armed submarine have seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II.
You don't want to know what Stage II is. The US maintains the capability of a full scale retaliatory strike even if they're knocked back to the Stone Age.
"All nuclear-weapon states except Pakistan and North Korea are currently confirmed to have deployed MIRV missile systems. Israel is suspected to possess or be in the process of developing MIRVs."
Right now the B52 and B2 can carry nukes, and the new B21 Raider will be able to as well. Pretty sure the majority of our fighters can carry them as well for tactical purposes as opposed to strategic warfare.
I know the B-52 can carry nuke tipped cruise missiles. Lots of them. The gravity bombs are tactical weapons used by fighter jets.
The smaller air-bursting ones that go on MIRVs are great and all, but you need a lot of the big ground-bursting if you really want to blot out the sun.
Modern nuclear weapons use tritium gas to boost the explosion. Tritium is radioactive and decays over time so it must be replaced after some years. Tritium is just hydrogen with neutrons and is being made in reactors and collected for weapon refurbishment.
(Elements pretty much always have stable isotopesand unstable isotopes. Cesium has like 30 unstable isotopes to it, hydrogen gas is stable and not radioactive but there's two other types of hydrogen deuterium and tritium. Deuterium isn't radioactive it's another stable isotope but tritium is radioactive. They're all hydrogen but they just have different amounts of neutrons. Same thing with other elements, depending on the amount of neutrons it has designates the isotope).
The weapons must be moved and disassembled for the gas to be replaced. The gas is made in SC reactors and purified in WA, and the weapons are dismantled and refurbished in MO I think. Warheads are dismantled and rebuilt in TX. Maybe other places, too. There's many missile fields around Minot. The nukes require a lot of maintenance and are periodically checked to ensure they are operational and I believe some of the maintenance cannot be done in the missile silos. They have to be transported back to the DOE for maintenance every once in a while. Plutonium and Tritium don't last forever.
The trailers themselves that carry Minuteman warhead not gravity bombs, are specially designed with hoist equipment inside to park over a silo and lift the warhead off for maintenance.
Often these convoys are just drills and dry runs.
Same thing happens at Hanford Nuclear site in
Washington State. A couple times a week the entire road is shut down for a convoy transporting nuclear material. It's really just to establish patterns for counterintelligence purposes. Many of these convoys don't actuality have any nukes even if nearly everyone involved thinks they do.
May also be to make knowing which sites are actually operational difficult. That's why Russia and North Korea have truck and rail mounted ICBMs. We considered doing it with trains, but opted for hardened bunkers instead.
celebrated-25-years-support-tritium-
production-national-security
Plutonium pit production is spinning up a lot at Los Alamos. We can still make them. It's true there was a time in the 90s where we couldn't after the EPA and FBI shut down the production facility in Colorado due to the many, many environmental laws being violated there.
No more floppy disks
I suspect that might be why they are
moving nukes regularly in Minot. Probably gravity bombs as opposed to ICBM warheads. Tritium is used in fusion, thermonuclear bombs, hydrogen bombs. Fission bombs use a small amount as well.
Well... nukes are maintenance intensive, if you don't maintain them they become duds. Also,
the US has a Programme ongoing upgrading
their nuclear capabilities in the face of Russia
and China. We have more missiles than silos so that our silos are always ready to fire.
I'm betting the Russians are not checking the oil and tritium on their nukes regularly…
There is basically a projected failure rate, 100% of them aren't going to go. There are going to be mechanical failures, maybe they wont detonate on impact, some may miss their target. Some wont leave the platform. With the United States thats a very small number. Russia's failure rate would be much higher.
thebulletin.org
en.wikipedia.org
This is one of the single most powerful people on the planet…
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
(Nuclear section)
New US missile to replace Minuteman III.
en.wikipedia.org
asia.nikkei.com
The US located its silos in places like Montana for a few reasons: rural (minimal civilian and infrastructure), away from the coasts, shortest trajectory is over polar route, ect.
Nuclear bombs can be much bigger than thermobaric bombs, so they are better at killing pathogens, but they also leave much more of a mess. For a given amount of mess, thermobaric bombs are probably better.
I would expect a nuclear winter would decrease hurricanes due to cooler sea temperatures, but yes, there could be an impact.
Plutonium 239 as a critical mass about 10 cm in diameter, so be hard to get a bomb smaller than a softball. If one includes dirty bombs as nuclear weapons, then a firecracker in a paper cup of radioactive waste would be smaller, but that's not a nuclear explosion.
Xenon's destructive capabilities are almost nonexistent. Splitting xenon releases only about one third as much energy per nucleon (or 1/ as much per atom) as splitting uranium. Furthermore, uranium 235 releases neutrons when it is split, which can lead to a chain reaction, while xenon does not release neutrons (or at least not enough to sustain a chain reaction), and it is a great absorber of neutrons. And the fusion of hydrogen releases almost 25 times as much energy per nucleon as the splitting of Xenon.
Combined, the United States and Russia now possess approximately 88 percent of the world's total inventory of nuclear weapons.
The warheads on just one US nuclear-armed submarine have seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II.
You don't want to know what Stage II is. The US maintains the capability of a full scale retaliatory strike even if they're knocked back to the Stone Age.
"All nuclear-weapon states except Pakistan and North Korea are currently confirmed to have deployed MIRV missile systems. Israel is suspected to possess or be in the process of developing MIRVs."
Right now the B52 and B2 can carry nukes, and the new B21 Raider will be able to as well. Pretty sure the majority of our fighters can carry them as well for tactical purposes as opposed to strategic warfare.
I know the B-52 can carry nuke tipped cruise missiles. Lots of them. The gravity bombs are tactical weapons used by fighter jets.
The smaller air-bursting ones that go on MIRVs are great and all, but you need a lot of the big ground-bursting if you really want to blot out the sun.
Modern nuclear weapons use tritium gas to boost the explosion. Tritium is radioactive and decays over time so it must be replaced after some years. Tritium is just hydrogen with neutrons and is being made in reactors and collected for weapon refurbishment.
(Elements pretty much always have stable isotopesand unstable isotopes. Cesium has like 30 unstable isotopes to it, hydrogen gas is stable and not radioactive but there's two other types of hydrogen deuterium and tritium. Deuterium isn't radioactive it's another stable isotope but tritium is radioactive. They're all hydrogen but they just have different amounts of neutrons. Same thing with other elements, depending on the amount of neutrons it has designates the isotope).
The weapons must be moved and disassembled for the gas to be replaced. The gas is made in SC reactors and purified in WA, and the weapons are dismantled and refurbished in MO I think. Warheads are dismantled and rebuilt in TX. Maybe other places, too. There's many missile fields around Minot. The nukes require a lot of maintenance and are periodically checked to ensure they are operational and I believe some of the maintenance cannot be done in the missile silos. They have to be transported back to the DOE for maintenance every once in a while. Plutonium and Tritium don't last forever.
The trailers themselves that carry Minuteman warhead not gravity bombs, are specially designed with hoist equipment inside to park over a silo and lift the warhead off for maintenance.
Often these convoys are just drills and dry runs.
Same thing happens at Hanford Nuclear site in
Washington State. A couple times a week the entire road is shut down for a convoy transporting nuclear material. It's really just to establish patterns for counterintelligence purposes. Many of these convoys don't actuality have any nukes even if nearly everyone involved thinks they do.
May also be to make knowing which sites are actually operational difficult. That's why Russia and North Korea have truck and rail mounted ICBMs. We considered doing it with trains, but opted for hardened bunkers instead.
celebrated-25-years-support-tritium-
production-national-security
Plutonium pit production is spinning up a lot at Los Alamos. We can still make them. It's true there was a time in the 90s where we couldn't after the EPA and FBI shut down the production facility in Colorado due to the many, many environmental laws being violated there.
No more floppy disks
I suspect that might be why they are
moving nukes regularly in Minot. Probably gravity bombs as opposed to ICBM warheads. Tritium is used in fusion, thermonuclear bombs, hydrogen bombs. Fission bombs use a small amount as well.
Well... nukes are maintenance intensive, if you don't maintain them they become duds. Also,
the US has a Programme ongoing upgrading
their nuclear capabilities in the face of Russia
and China. We have more missiles than silos so that our silos are always ready to fire.
I'm betting the Russians are not checking the oil and tritium on their nukes regularly…
There is basically a projected failure rate, 100% of them aren't going to go. There are going to be mechanical failures, maybe they wont detonate on impact, some may miss their target. Some wont leave the platform. With the United States thats a very small number. Russia's failure rate would be much higher.
Why is America getting a new $100 billion nuclear weapon?
The reasons for the United States new intercontinental ballistic missile—the ground-based strategic deterrent, or GBSD—are historical, political, and to a significant extent economic. Many people in the states where the new missile will be built and based see it as an economic lifeline. Their...
thebulletin.org
Operation Looking Glass - Wikipedia
TACAMO - Wikipedia
Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle - Wikipedia
Counterforce - Wikipedia
Decapitation (military strategy) - Wikipedia
New US missile to replace Minuteman III.
LGM-35 Sentinel - Wikipedia
U.S. rushes to revive nuclear weapons industry as global tensions mount
Atomic arsenal built in Cold War needs modern revamp
asia.nikkei.com
The US located its silos in places like Montana for a few reasons: rural (minimal civilian and infrastructure), away from the coasts, shortest trajectory is over polar route, ect.
Nuclear bombs can be much bigger than thermobaric bombs, so they are better at killing pathogens, but they also leave much more of a mess. For a given amount of mess, thermobaric bombs are probably better.
I would expect a nuclear winter would decrease hurricanes due to cooler sea temperatures, but yes, there could be an impact.
Plutonium 239 as a critical mass about 10 cm in diameter, so be hard to get a bomb smaller than a softball. If one includes dirty bombs as nuclear weapons, then a firecracker in a paper cup of radioactive waste would be smaller, but that's not a nuclear explosion.
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