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High Energy, Nuclear, Particle Physics
Why can't nuclear reactions burn the atmosphere
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[QUOTE="Astronuc, post: 6631847, member: 15685"] There were two camps, one that the atmosphere would experience a 'fusion chain reaction' and the other would not. Some were concerned until the Trinity test, where it didn't happen. The atmosphere density is too low, and the high temperatures in the core of a nuclear weapon dissipates very rapidly. It wouldn't be N-N fusion, because that would take much greater temperature and pressures, and CNO-cycle only happens in stars with the right density (and pressures) and composition (age). The pressure maintains the density at temperature (and there is quasi-steady-state balance between radiation (force) pressure and gravitational (force) pressure). Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Hans Bethe, provided the first predictions of the carbon [I]cycle [/I]in the 1930s. [URL]https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018PhP...20..124W/abstract[/URL] Outside of stars, one needs magnetic confinement to maintain a plasma long enough to develop fusion, with light nuclei like d and t, or [SUP]3[/SUP]He; intertial confinement works on smaller time scales. As the atomic number of nuclei increase, the energy required to induce fusion increases (increased Coulomb repulsion), and the energy losses due to bremsstrahlung and recombination increase. With fission devices and fusion devices, there is a tremendous number of neutrons produced, and these neutrons will flow out of the detonation plasma into surrounding atmosphere and ground where they will likely be absorbed and transmute nuclei. That is independent of the fission products, which are released to the environment. [/QUOTE]
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High Energy, Nuclear, Particle Physics
Why can't nuclear reactions burn the atmosphere
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