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Simulation of Nuclear Weapon Secondary Explosion

Posted by michael on from the things-that-go-boom dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Here is what all those DOE supercomputers have been crunching: On April 30, the Crestone project team at the Laboratory successfully completed the first three-dimensional simulation of a nuclear weapon secondary explosion. The total processor time was 2.01 million hours... The details are at Los Alamos National Laboratory." The secondary explosion in today's modern weapons occurs when a fission device explodes and compresses a light isotope (often tritium) until it creates a fusion reaction. This increases the total yield by a factor of perhaps 100-1000.

2 of 16 comments (clear)

  1. That's just great by 11223 · · Score: 4
    That's just great - now does the cluster go back to Seti@Home crunching?

    Personally, I think that they need to get their priorities straight. After we make contact with the little grey men with bug eyes, they'll give us all the computer technology we need to do these simulations.

  2. 2 million hours? by Chairboy · · Score: 4

    I don't get it, my new 3dfx card can render nuclear explosions at 66 fps! Maybe they should update their drivers...

    : )