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Mark 10 Nuclear Bomb
The Mark 10 nuclear bomb was a proposed American nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 8 nuclear bomb design. The Mark 10, like the Mark 8, is a Gun-type nuclear weapon, which rapidly assembles several critical masses of fissile nuclear material by firing a fissile projectile or "bullet" over a fissile "target", using a system which closely resembles a medium-sized cannon barrel and propellant. The Mark 10 was intended to be a general purpose airburst nuclear weapon, unlike the Mark 8 which was intended to penetrate into the ground as a Nuclear bunker buster. It was nicknamed the "Airburst Elsie"; the Mark 8 had been nicknamed the LC or Light Casing bomb, which was then expanded to "Elsie." The bomb was in diameter and weighed . It had a design yield of 12 to 15 kilotons. The Mark 10 design was cancelled in 1952, replaced by the implosion-type Mark 12 which was lighter and used considerably less fissile material. See also * List of nuclear weapons * Mark 1 Little Boy nuclear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to . The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to . Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as can release energy equal to more than . A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been deployed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark 8 Nuclear Bomb
The Mark 8 nuclear bomb was an American nuclear bomb, designed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, which was in service from 1952 to 1957. Description The Mark 8 was a gun-type nuclear bomb, which rapidly assembles several critical masses of fissile nuclear material by firing a fissile projectile or "bullet" over and around a fissile "target", using a system which closely resembles a medium-sized cannon barrel and propellant. The Mark 8 was an early earth-penetrating bomb (see nuclear bunker buster), intended to dig into the earth some distance prior to detonating. According to one government source, the Mark 8 could penetrate of reinforced concrete, of hard sand, of clay, or of hardened armor-plate steel. by Carson Mark, Raym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gun-type Nuclear Weapon
Gun-type fission weapons are fission-based nuclear weapons whose design assembles their fissile material into a supercritical mass by the use of the "gun" method: shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another. Although this is sometimes pictured as two sub-critical hemispheres driven together to make a supercritical sphere, typically a hollow projectile is shot onto a spike which fills the hole in its center. Its name is a reference to the fact that it is shooting the material through an artillery barrel as if it were a projectile. Since it is a relatively slow method of assembly, plutonium cannot be used unless it is purely the 239 isotope. Production of impurity-free plutonium is very difficult and is impractical. The required amount of uranium is relatively large, and thus the overall efficiency is relatively low. The main reason for this is the uranium metal does not undergo compression (and resulting density increase) as does the implosion design. Instead, gun ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Mass
In nuclear engineering, a critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specifically, its nuclear fission cross-section), density, shape, enrichment, purity, temperature, and surroundings. The concept is important in nuclear weapon design. Explanation of criticality When a nuclear chain reaction in a mass of fissile material is self-sustaining, the mass is said to be in a ''critical'' state in which there is no increase or decrease in power, temperature, or neutron population. A numerical measure of a critical mass is dependent on the effective neutron multiplication factor , the average number of neutrons released per fission event that go on to cause another fission event rather than being absorbed or leaving the material. When ''k'' = 1, the mass is critical, and the chain reaction is self-sustaining. A ''subcritical'' mass is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Bunker Buster
A nuclear bunker buster, also known as an earth-penetrating weapon (EPW), is the nuclear equivalent of the conventional bunker buster. The non-nuclear component of the weapon is designed to penetrate soil, rock, or concrete to deliver a nuclear warhead to an underground target. These weapons would be used to destroy hardened, underground military bunkers or other below-ground facilities. An underground explosion releases a larger fraction of its energy into the ground, compared to a surface burst or air burst explosion at or above the surface, and so can destroy an underground target using a lower explosive yield. This in turn could lead to a reduced amount of radioactive fallout. However, it is unlikely that the explosion would be completely contained underground. As a result, significant amounts of rock and soil would be rendered radioactive and lofted as dust or vapor into the atmosphere, generating significant fallout. Base principle While conventional bunker busters use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiloton
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a tonne, metric ton (1,000 kilograms) of Trinitrotoluene, TNT. In other words, for each gram of TNT exploded, (or 4184 joules) of energy is released. This convention intends to compare the destructiveness of an event with that of conventional explosive materials, of which TNT is a typical example, although other conventional explosives such as dynamite contain more energy. Kiloton and megaton The "kiloton (of TNT)" is a unit of energy equal to 4.184 tera-, terajoules (). The "megaton (of TNT)" is a unit of energy equal to 4.184 peta-, petajoules (). The kiloton and megaton of TNT have traditionally been used to describe the energy output, and hence the destructive power, of a nuclear weapon. The TNT equivalent appears in various CTBT, n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark 12 Nuclear Bomb
The Mark-12 nuclear bomb was a lightweight nuclear bomb designed and manufactured by the United States which was built starting in 1954 and which saw service from then until 1962. The Mark-12 was notable for being significantly smaller in both size and weight compared to prior implosion-type nuclear weapons. For example, the overall diameter was only , compared to the immediately prior Mark-7 which had a diameter, and the volume of the implosion assembly was only 40% the size of the Mark-7's. There was a planned W-12 warhead variant which would have been used with the RIM-8 Talos missile, but it was cancelled prior to introduction into service. Specifications The complete Mark-12 bomb was in diameter, long, and weighed . It had a yield of . Features The Mark-12 has been speculated to have been the first deployed nuclear weapon to have used beryllium as a reflector-tamper inside the implosion assembly (see nuclear weapon design Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Nuclear Weapons
This is a list of nuclear weapons listed according to country of origin, and then by type within the states. United States US nuclear weapons of all types – bombs, warheads, shells, and others – are numbered in the same sequence starting with the Mark 1 and () ending with the W-91 (which was canceled prior to introduction into service). All designs which were formally intended to be weapons at some point received a number designation. Pure test units which were experiments (and not intended to be weapons) are not numbered in this sequence. Early weapons were very large and could only be used as free fall bombs. These were known by "Mark" designators, like the Mark 4 which was a development of the Fat Man weapon. As weapons became more sophisticated they also became much smaller and lighter, allowing them to be used in many roles. At this time the weapons began to receive designations based on their role; bombs were given the prefix "B", while the same warhead used in other r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Boy
"Little Boy" was the type of atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress ''Enola Gay'' piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces and Captain Robert A. Lewis. It exploded with an energy of approximately and caused widespread death and destruction throughout the city. The Hiroshima bombing was the second man-made nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test. Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch (geophysicist), Francis Birch's group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, a reworking of their unsuccessful Thin Man (nuclear bomb), Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon, but it derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235, where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold War Aerial Bombs Of The United States
Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is absolute zero, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale. This corresponds to on the Celsius scale, on the Fahrenheit scale, and on the Rankine scale. Since temperature relates to the thermal energy held by an object or a sample of matter, which is the kinetic energy of the random motion of the particle constituents of matter, an object will have less thermal energy when it is colder and more when it is hotter. If it were possible to cool a system to absolute zero, all motion of the particles in a sample of matter would cease and they would be at complete rest in the classical sense. The object could be described as having zero thermal energy. Microscopically in the description of quantum mechanics, however, matter still has zero-point energy even at absolute zero, because ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
