Speculation: Highest yield nuclear weapons in existance

[Krudus]

Since the cold war nuclear race we haven't really heard much about nuclear weapons development, but i imagine that the technology is pretty far ahead today compared to what it was when they detonated Tsar Bomba in 1961, which was a 50 mt. hydrogen bomb with a design that allowed 100 mt.

So i know that there is really no upper limit on a hydrogen bomb, but I am curious about what developments have been made in this field, and what yield the biggest bomb existing today has?

 

[russ_watters]

Welcome to PF.

Big bombs are just muscle-flexing and they don't really have much of a useful purpose. So I'm not sure anyone went any bigger. Most of our missiles have multiple warheads to hit multiple targets.

 

[boneh3ad]

Yeah, the race to build bigger bombs was more of a pissing match than anything else. After the ridiculousness of Tsar Bomba, the focus was MIRVs and more accurate warheads. The various START treaties have reduced the scope of MIRVs so precision strike is the name of the game now.

 

[granpa]

most of the energy of high yield nuclear weapons goes upward and out of the atmosphere rather than in the directions you really want it to go.

 

[MadMike]

Since the US B53 bomb is no longer operational, and the 25 megaton warhead for the Russian R-36 missile (SS-18) was retired, the honor goes to the People's Republic of China with their DF-5 ICBM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-5

 

[DaveC426913]

China with their DF-5 ICBM.

Dongfeng. :rofl:

 

[Drakkith]

Since the cold war nuclear race we haven't really heard much about nuclear weapons development, but i imagine that the technology is pretty far ahead today compared to what it was when they detonated Tsar Bomba in 1961, which was a 50 mt. hydrogen bomb with a design that allowed 100 mt.

So i know that there is really no upper limit on a hydrogen bomb, but I am curious about what developments have been made in this field, and what yield the biggest bomb existing today has?

The total yield of a thermonuclear weapon isn't really dependant on the state of the technology used to create it. Consider dynamite. You can simply add more dynamite to get a larger explosion, to an extent. Improvements in technology mostly reduce the warhead in size for the same yield. The Tsar Bomba weapon was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated and they made the decision to NOT detonate at its largest yield. It was somewhere around half of what it could have been. (Designed for up to 100 MT, actual detonation was reduced to 50 MT.)

Also, because of the immense negativity surround nuclear weapons (and the end of the Cold War) there hasn't been much advancement beyond about 80's technology. Most warheads have been around for decades.

 

[tasp77]

A little mostly uninformed speculation here,

Would the full scale yield of the Tsar device be perhaps quite a bit in excess of 100MT?

My thinking is, (ignoring the fission trigger) in the device as tested, when the Pu stick reacts, it dumps an enormous flux of heat into the surrounding H, D, T, and Li which then starts fusing. The resulting blast was ~50MT.

In a full scale test, the outer casing would be DU instead of Pb. As the fusion reaction radiates neutrons, the DU will fission, and dump an enormous flux of heat back inwards into the fusion materials. There will be a significant increase in the thoroughness of that part of the burn, and a resulting and commensurate increase in the neutron flux into the DU layer. The intermediate fusion stage is significantly enhanced in the full scale device, and the tertiary fission stage will amplify the yield considerably.

I'm thinking the 100MT estimate is extremely conservative . . .

 

[A.T.]

Dongfeng. :rofl:

Good name for an ICBM. Dong-Bang would be even better.

 

[Hurkyl]

Consider dynamite. You can simply add more dynamite to get a larger explosion, to an extent.

The part I put in bold is rather important. As I understand it, you're already beyond that "to an extent limit" for even the very simplest atomic bomb.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Since the US B53 bomb is no longer operational, and the 25 megaton warhead for the Russian R-36 missile (SS-18) was retired, the honor goes to the People's Republic of China with their DF-5 ICBM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-5

DF-5 (Dong Feng means Eastern Wind), is a missile, not a bomb.

 

[JeffKoch]

A little mostly uninformed speculation here...

I doubt anyone here can do more than idly speculate, that bomb was designed 50+ years ago behind the iron curtain, and anyone with firsthand knowledge is probably long dead. But published reports I've seen state the design yield was 100 MT, and I can't see any reason to doubt that given that none of us know how the thing worked.