Nukes: The Next Generation

jonerik writes: "Following up on the weekend's posting on the revision of American nuclear war-fighting plans, the New York Times has this article on the difficulties in building a new generation of nukes. The American nuclear arms industry is much smaller now than it was ten years ago, testing the new, smaller "bunker busters" would be problematic, and no one's certain that a nuclear weapon with a tiny explosive yield that's capable of penetrating yards of reinforced concrete could actually be built."

Comments

what?

[mschachter]

but i thought any nation that was amassing weapons of mass destruction was terrorist?

Hey, the american citizens!

[codexus]

Couldn't you get rid of Bush before he starts a thermonuclear war?

Cause I don't know about you, but the rest of the planet is getting a little bit scared.

Re:Of course small munitions are possible!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I don't understand why it wouldn't; if they can make a chemical bomb that penetrates that much stuff and functions, I'm sure a fission device could. The physics of the impact would be the same, but the required explosive payload would be smaller for the fission device.

Because modern conventional explosives are incredibly sturdy: you can bang on them with hammers, light them on fire, etc. and they won't go off, but even after major abuse, they'll still detonate reliably if the right stimulus is applied. In contrast, nukes are delicate, tricky beasts: abuse them too much before detonation and you won't get a yield, or worse, you'll get a low yield and incredible amounts of fallout. Basically, nukes are mechanical devices; conventional bombs are solid-state.