User:MatthieuFoucu/Nuclear weapon

Changes that I made to the Wiki article:

Nuclear weapons have only twice been used in warfare, both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) detonated a uranium gun-type fission bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" over the Japanese city of Hiroshima; three days later, on August 9, the USAAF detonated a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" over the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). All such weapons derive a significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, and fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.

Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described to the right,

The simplest method for delivering a nuclear weapon is a gravity bomb dropped from aircraft; this was the method used by the United States against Japan. This method places few restrictions on the size of the weapon. It does, however, limit attack range, response time to an impending attack, and the number of weapons that a country can field at the same time. With miniaturization, nuclear bombs can be delivered by both strategic bombers and tactical fighter-bombers. This method is the primary means of nuclear weapons delivery; the majority of U.S. nuclear warheads, for example, are free-fall gravity bombs, namely the B61, which is being improved upon to this day.^{[needs update]}

Critics from the peace movement and within the military establishment have questioned the usefulness of such weapons in the current military climate. According to an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in 1996, the use of (or threat of use of) such weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, but the court did not reach an opinion as to whether or not the threat or use would be lawful in specific extreme circumstances such as if the survival of the state were at stake. Countries commit war crimes everyday, sometimes unintentional.

August 21, 1945: While conducting experiments on a plutonium-gallium core at Los Alamos National Laboratory, physicist Harry Daghlian received a lethal dose of radiation when an error caused it to enter prompt criticality. He died 25 days later, on September 15, 1945, from radiation poisoning.

September 18-19, 1980: the Damascus Accident, occured in Damascus, Arkansas, where a Titan Missile Equipped with a nuclear warhead exploded. The accident was caused by a maintenance man who dropped a socket from a socket wrench down an 80-foot (24 m) shaft, puncturing a fuel tank on the rocket. Leaking fuel resulted in a hypergolic fuel explosion, jettisoning the W-53 warhead beyond the launch site.

People near the Hiroshima explosion and who managed to survive the explosion subsequently suffered a variety of horrible medical effects. Some of these effects are still present to this day:

According to an audit by the Brookings Institution, between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent $11.3 trillion in present-day terms on nuclear weapons programs. 57% of which was spent on building nuclear weapons delivery systems. 6.3% of the total, $709 billion in present-day terms, was spent on environmental remediation and nuclear waste management, for example cleaning up the Hanford site, and 7% of the total, $795 billion was spent on making nuclear weapons themselves. This caused a lot of uprising in the country at the time. Many people were mad at the government for not spending this money on other parts of the government that needed help, such as paying for university.

Non war based usages:

It’s worth noting that the concept of peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) extended beyond mere excavation projects. Proposed uses included a wide range of applications such as electrical generation, driving spacecraft, and even a form of wide-area fracking. The United States, under Project Plowshare, considered ideas like blasting a new Panama Canal, using underground explosions to create electricity (Project PACER), and various mining, geological, and radionuclide studies.

The Soviet Union’s program, Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, was more extensive, conducting 239 nuclear explosions. They successfully used two bombs to seal blown-out oil wells. However, both programs faced increasing public opposition due to environmental concerns, including the release of radioactive gas into the air and the contamination of groundwater.

These programs were eventually controlled by a variety of agreements, most notably the 1976 Treaty on Underground Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes (PNE Treaty). Despite the cessation of these programs, the topic of PNEs continues to be relevant, especially in discussions around asteroid impact avoidance.