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?

Why do they need this?

[PD]

Are there bunkers in existence that are not vulnerable to the conventional bunker busters? Might those bunkers be in Iraq? I am mighty skeptical that there's a bunker in existence that can't be destroyed by a large precisely targeted conventional bomb. The only exception to this would be a bunker that's extremely deep, but a small nuke would also have trouble with this. Probably nothing that can't be solved with a larger nuke. Funny (not funny haha) how we all thought 5 years ago that since the Russians are our friends we didn't have to worry about nuclear war, and now our President might actually use nukes in an upcoming war.

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.

Of course small munitions are possible!

[JCMay]

This place has all you want to know about the "Golden Age" of American nuclear testing.

This is a picture of the Hardtack II / De Baca test, which was a small nuclear gravity bomb (11.3 inches in diameter, 15 inches long, weight 66 lb). It had a "disappointing" 2.2 kTon yield.

Even more interesting is Upshot-Knothole / Grable which was a nuclear cannon shell.

How small did they get? Here's the W54 (Davey Crockett) warhead, normally used as a rocket mortar round. It weighs 50 pounds, and has a yield of 22 TONS. Not Kilotons. Not megatons. Tons.

Of course small nuclear devices are possible, even workable. Not every miltary explosive needs to be like Castle/Bravo (the largest nuclear device the US has tested).

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.