Talk:Nuclear weapon

Incorrect working principle of fusion bomb

Unlike mentioned here, heating of fusion fuel is a problem it does not do any good. Fission stage is used only to compress lithium deutheride and plutonium tube, by vaporization outer layer of uranium or any other heavy metal. this is happens by using X-rays that easily pass everything else, besides mentioned metals, without heating. Imploded plutonium tube reaches supercritical state and acts like usual but extremely boosted fission bomb. So in practice fission stage is just fancy replacement for conventional explosives used for imploding fission core, and it is only used for generating X-ray burst. It also says in the article that in a fusion bomb that plutonium can only be used. This is because if uranium core is used not enough energy is released and the reaction will not sustain itself.

Explosion of fission stage must happen before particles coming from fission stage disintegrate everything. and this is possible because X rays travel at speed of light while everything else is much slower. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.118.79.244 (talk) 12:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

WWII Axis nuclear program

The documentary "Mission for Mussolini" verifies that Nazi Germany set off a nuclear weapon of 'low enriched Uranium alloyed with light elements'. They found fission products at the test site. See neutron source for the chemistry. Deuterium, Lithium, Beryllium, even Boron not only multiply the effective number of fission neutrons (therefore requiring lesser enrichment) but also generate fast neutrons that can split U. We could reference Germany's bomb program. Shjacks45 (talk) 21:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like Hitlers Bombe, which is generally considered to be "unproven" and "unlikely" to say the least. Low-enriched uranium does not detonate (though it could be made into a reactor). Boron absorbs neutrons, I believe. German nuclear energy project describes what is considered the "reliable" account of Germany's activities. --Mr.98 (talk) 04:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Must of what I have read has stated that Germany had a nuclear program, but that they didn't start it until mid- to late- WWII, and that they never pursued it with much effort. I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe that WWII Germany ever had anything beyond Heavy Water. kc0wir [Student] (Talk|User) 08:16, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

US military propaganda? We still have documents from the Civil War marked "Top Secret". The Soviet and the British governments have declassifies WWII documents. The Russians don't joke about thousands of prisoners-of-war murdered by the Nazis. Nagasaki and Hiroshima show only traces of fission products as they were air burst weapons. The release of neutrons can be inferred to have occurred there but not proven. Testing methodology by pro and con sides is lacking. "Too much Chernobyl background"? Please. The fission products of steady state thermal U235 fission are different than fast neutron bomb event; and as noted re Japan, the amount of fission products is small and mostly vaporized into fallout. For a Reactor (gee, that requires STABILITY) a moderator is used to optimized U235 slow neutron absorption. Enrico Fermi in the US created the first reactor with low purity unenriched Uranium Oxide using Graphite as a very efficient moderator which turned out to be "too efficient" in the Chernobyl case. Note that typically (average 15%; 5-25% depending on design) fast neutrons generated from U235 fusion cause fission of U238 before getting to the Moderator and slowing down. Basic Physics people: "similar weight objects split energy of collision better (e.g. neutron-1 and carbon-12), the U238 "tamper" in a bomb may make it "dirty" but also reflects back fast neutrons with little energy sharing (loss). H-bomb info is classified but 30-50% of the Energy released is from Fission of the U238 tamper; AND not from just the fast neutrons but from the 40+ MeV Gamma rays contained inside the bomb structure by the tamper! (Consider that when U235 absorbs a thermal neutron it becomes a high energy state of U236, which occasionally emits a high energy Gamma ray to become the naturally occurring long lived U236 isotope. This long lived U236 can absorb a high energy Gamma ray, becoming the higher energy version of U236, and then fission.) Thorium is also a heavy nucleus and can be used as a "tamper". The Th232 isotope found in nature does not fission from thermal neutrons, however will fission with more energetic "fast" neutrons. The reason we don't make reactors with U238 is that the U235 reaction gives off 2-5 neutrons to continue and U238 reaction releases fewer neutrons to continue the reaction to critical mass. Then remember that Uranium bombs require a neutron source to trigger the reaction. See [Neutron source]. Standard source is Polonium-210(alpha emitter) mixed with Berylium-9 (+ alpha = C12 + n + energy). Other combinations such as Radium and Lithium or high energy x-ray tube and light metal (e.g. Li, Be) also generate neutrons. Yes, Boron-10 has a high affinity for absorbing neutrons, but the product Boron-11 has so much extra energy that it splits into high energy Alpha particle and high energy Lithium-7 fragment. Boron-10 plus alpha (Helium-4) gives Carbon-13 plus neutron. Fast neutron reacts with Lithium-7 to yield Li-6 and TWO neutrons (overcoming the major objection to U-238 bomb). Boron-11 also generates neutrons from Alpha absorbtion and can also participate in spallation (fast n > 2 n) reactions. Documentation: The Russian Army took custody of all documents and witnesses as Thuringia was in the Soviet occupation zone.

Shjacks45 (talk) 17:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Technically, the category "Top Secret" was not created until 1944, so it seems unlikely there would be any Civil War documents marked as such. (I've never heard of any Civil War documents still classified. There are apparently some WWI documents still considered secret, pertaining to cryptography.) On the rest of it, it's really quite unclear what you're getting at. It is still completely unclear how you would try to make a bomb using LEU. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:58, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Actual testing

N-weapons untested don't always work. Do we have verified Canadian and Israeli tests? FYI the 'theft of yellow cake from Nigeria' WMD story first surfaced in the 70's and it involved Israel stealing and the French government being paid off for the "inconvenience". Shjacks45 (talk) 17:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

There has never been a Canadian nuclear weapon. So there has never been a Canadian nuclear test. Canada is not a weapons state.

It is unknown whether Israel has tested. They have certainly conducted non-nuclear tests. They may have conducted at least one clandestine test (see Vela Incident). It is true that if they have never tested, their confidence level would probably be lower that the design was successful and would have a known yield. But a lot can be done without full yield testing if the scientists are clever, so they have no doubt taken that into consideration.

On the latter point, I think you're referring to Operation Plumbat, which is different from the Nigeria thing. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:49, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Canada participated in US weapon sharing programs, but they never manufactured or maintained weapons. The weapons sharing programs make clear lines somewhat ambiguous but Canada unambiguously didn't build their own weapons or test any. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:36, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit for a typo

These lines are in the See Also> History list, at the bottom:

Weapon of mass destruction

   Nuclear strategy
   Nuclear warfare

Weapon of mass destruction

the two "weapon of mass destruction"s listed link to the same place. 74.132.249.206 (talk) 17:56, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: Those four entries are all links on the actual page. And I do not know why it put "nuclear warfare" and "nuclear strategy" in a gray box when I wrote this. 74.132.249.206 (talk)

Fixed I've removed the duplicate link. Thanks for the note! The gray box is what happens whenever you start a new line with a blank space. You can use a colon (:) for indentation, like I did in this post. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 08:35, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 66.183.228.189, 4 October 2011

Sources need to be verified and some information is a bit bias.

66.183.228.189 (talk) 06:08, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you be specific with the issues? --Jnorton7558 (talk) 13:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

not sure if this is the best location for Saudi Arabia resource

Prince Hints Saudi Arabia May Join Nuclear Arms Race by theAssociated Press published December 6, 2011 New York Times, excerpt ...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi prince, in a remark designed to send chills through the Obama administration and its allies, suggested that the kingdom might consider producing nuclear weapons if it found itself between atomic arsenals in Iran and Israel. The prince, Turki al-Faisal, who has served as the Saudi intelligence chief and as ambassador to the United States, made the comment on Monday at a Persian Gulf security forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The remark confirmed Western fears about the potential for an arms race in the Middle East if Iran moves to produce a nuclear weapon.

99.181.136.158 (talk) 00:29, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't really fit here. It also doesn't fit in List of states with nuclear weapons, since that is about countries that actually have/had weapons or weapons programs. Some reference might fit into Nuclear proliferation. NPguy (talk) 03:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)