Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons

selfAdjoint

See this excellent paper on the latest technology research on using tiny pellets of DT to yield explosions in the 100 ton range. Also includes brief but illuminating discussion of earlier nuclear weapons, from an international standpoint.

theCandyman

What is the Independent Scientific Research Institute? The paper seems like an intresting read, but I do not like the idea of research into more powerful nuclear weapons. The current ones are already so powerful, there is not a need to get greedy and make sommething that has the probability of having an effect on something other than a target if a bomb absolutely has to be used, earth is a confined space after all.

*Lapin Dormant*

100 ton range is less then the KILOtonnes of an A bomb, and less moreso then the MEGAtonnes of the H bomb.

If I have the inference of "100 tons range" read properly. Smaller weapons of destrucive force from Nuclear sourcing.

selfAdjoint

Quote by Lapin Dormant

100 ton range is less then the KILOtonnes of an A bomb, and less moreso then the MEGAtonnes of the H bomb.
If I have the inference of "100 tons range" read properly. Smaller weapons of destrucive force from Nuclear sourcing.

Yes. And with only a tiny, very thin shell of actinide, so minimal radiation signature. DT is a clean reaction, and they only need milligrams of it per weapon, so "safe for battlefield use"!

hitssquad

Quote by selfAdjoint

with [...] a [...] thin shell of actinide

What are you referring to? I only skimmed the article, but it seemed to be saying that the trigger would be non-fission. Are you referring to a U-238 blanket? I didn't see the article mention a U-238 blanket.

sharmans

wow...Great

selfAdjoint

Quote by hitssquad

What are you referring to? I only skimmed the article, but it seemed to be saying that the trigger would be non-fission. Are you referring to a U-238 blanket? I didn't see the article mention a U-238 blanket.

I thought I saw a reference to a thin shell of Uranium or Plutonium surrounding the pellet, but maybe this was in the "sparkplug" pellets used in H-bombs.

hitssquad

Quote by selfAdjoint

I thought I saw a reference to a thin shell of Uranium or Plutonium surrounding the pellet, but maybe this was in the "sparkplug" pellets used in H-bombs.

I think that was part of the section discussing older-generation devices:

2.2 Two-stage thermonuclear weapons

In two-stage thermonuclear weapons, the fusion material(i.e., lithium-deuteride, LiD) is generally packaged as a cylindrical or spherical shell sandwiched between an outer-shell of heavy material (the pusher/tamper) and an inner-shell of fissile material. This inner-shell (the spark-plug) is generally boosted with some DT gas. As suggested by its name, the purpose of the spark-plug is to ignite the fusion material at the appropriate time, i.e, once it has been sufficiently compressed. This whole package is called the "secondary" of the thermonuclear weapon, and is enclosed together with the "primary" in a thick and heavy "radiation case" which is designed to contain the soft-X-rays from the primary as long as possible.

theCandyman

Quote by Lapin Dormant

100 ton range is less then the KILOtonnes of an A bomb, and less moreso then the MEGAtonnes of the H bomb.

I did read it wrongly. I still do not agree with it, using smaller weapons like this would only encourage using larger ones.

Pengwuino

Quote by theCandyman

I did read it wrongly. I still do not agree with it, using smaller weapons like this would only encourage using larger ones.

That is if we actually ever use the smaller ones. Maybe there are actual applications for something like that (mining for example) although I wonder what kind fo radiation levels it creates. And I also believe the belief that using smaller will result in bigger is as baseless as when they started saying the cheaper/cleaner you can make them, the more people will start using them.

theCandyman

The machine gun comes to mind, the inventor wanted to make something so horrible that war would no longer be something humanity wanted. In the present, they are common place and unlike defending trenches in the world wars, they are mounted onto helicopters and vehicles.

Of course there are other applications for this, but they are looking into the "military effectiveness".

Pengwuino

I never really liked his reasoning for the machine gun. I don't see how he could have thought "humanity wants war" at the time and that the machine gun would have made people "not want it".

sid_galt

There is one weapon so horrible that humanity does not engage in major wars - the nuclear bomb.

Anyway, it's a pretty cool idea. I wonder how large they'll be. Could one for instance fit in a small UAV?

Grogs

Quote by Pengwuino

That is if we actually ever use the smaller ones. Maybe there are actual applications for something like that (mining for example) although I wonder what kind fo radiation levels it creates. And I also believe the belief that using smaller will result in bigger is as baseless as when they started saying the cheaper/cleaner you can make them, the more people will start using them.

I think it's just the opposite really. I think most sane (ok, at least a little bit sane) world leaders realize that tossing ICBM's around will cause serious fallout in the international community. These seem to be an attempt to subvert that. It's seems like sort of an 'if we use a bunch of smaller nukes, maybe they won't mind so much' theory.

As for the long-term radiation effects on the landscape, it doesn't look like they'd be too bad. Of course the immediate effects for those near the weapon would be pretty horrible. The LD50/30 range for a 1-ton device would be about 300m and for a 100-ton one it would be around 1000m. This means that a person standing 1000m from a 100-ton detonation would have a 50% chance of dying (painfully!) from acute radiation sickness in the next 30 days. Of course people farther out still have a chance of dying either from ARS or from a cancer induced by the radiation. Closer in, people would literally drop dead in their tracks.

*Lapin Dormant*

What about the simplistic idea that the main reason is a manner of disposing of all {of some} of that nuclear waste, as this is seen as a Practical application for it's disposal?

Personally I don't think we need any more explosive devices as we already have enough to 'face off' the planet.

Grogs

Quote by Lapin Dormant

What about the simplistic idea that the main reason is a manner of disposing of all {of some} of that nuclear waste, as this is seen as a Practical application for it's disposal?

I'm not sure I follow you. Was this something discussed in the paper? I don't see how these weapons could in any way help with waste disposal. The only radioactive isotope it would contain would be tritium (H-3). As radioactive substances go, Tritium is pretty benign, releasing only an 18.6 keV electron and no gammas whatsoever when it decays. We're also only talking about a few grams, so even if tritium *were* a serious disposal problem, it would take a *lot* of these bombs to make even a sizable dent in our inventory.

*Lapin Dormant*

Probably my error, as I did NOT read the paper, but in the manufacture of tritium, isn't that done by nuclear bombardment using radioactive isotopes?
Hence a 'use' for some of the waste?

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selfAdjoint Recognitions: Gold Member Staff Emeritus	Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons Tweet See this excellent paper on the latest technology research on using tiny pellets of DT to yield explosions in the 100 ton range. Also includes brief but illuminating discussion of earlier nuclear weapons, from an international standpoint.

Lapin Dormant	100 ton range is less then the KILOtonnes of an A bomb, and less moreso then the MEGAtonnes of the H bomb. If I have the inference of "100 tons range" read properly. Smaller weapons of destrucive force from Nuclear sourcing.

theCandyman	The machine gun comes to mind, the inventor wanted to make something so horrible that war would no longer be something humanity wanted. In the present, they are common place and unlike defending trenches in the world wars, they are mounted onto helicopters and vehicles. Of course there are other applications for this, but they are looking into the "military effectiveness".

Pengwuino Recognitions: Gold Member	I never really liked his reasoning for the machine gun. I don't see how he could have thought "humanity wants war" at the time and that the machine gun would have made people "not want it".

sid_galt	There is one weapon so horrible that humanity does not engage in major wars - the nuclear bomb. Anyway, it's a pretty cool idea. I wonder how large they'll be. Could one for instance fit in a small UAV?

sharmans	wow...Great