From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Tue Jan 26 1999 - 03:34:56 MST
Spike Jones [spike66@ibm.net] wrote:
>nuclear reactors dont scale down, nor do nuclear
>bombs. a certain critical mass is required. thought experiment: imagine
>scaling
>a fusion weapon all the way down to two atoms of plutonium 238.
Hate to tell you, but plutionium doesn't fuse, it fissions. Fusion bombs use
low-mass atoms like deuterium and tritium. Also, isn't 239 the isotope used
in fission bombs?
An equivalent thought experiment for fusion bombs would be to take two
atoms of deuterium, and use lasers to push them together at high speed. Do
it right, and they will fuse. The lower limits for fusion bombs are
technical rather than theoretical.
Michael S. Lorrey [retroman@together.net] wrote:
>Lessee, you can make a 10 kiloton weapon these days to fit in a suitcase, lets
>say, generously that that suitcase still weighs in at 100 kilos., so 100
>kilogram devices can produce 10 million kilograms of TNT levels of explosive
>power.
Firstly, the US backpack nukes were man-portable, so I'd say 50kg as an
upper limit; I have the approximate figures somewhere, but not close to
hand. Secondly, they were fission bombs (or possibly fusion-boosted
fission) with lots of shielding to protect the user from the radiation
from the decaying uranium. Nanofusion bombs shouldn't require anywhere
near as much shielding; little to none if you aren't concerned about
radiation detectors.
As a rule of thumb, the potential yield of nuclear explosives is about a
million times higher than an equivalent mass of chemical explosives; so a
well-designed bomb with one gram of fusion fuel should have a yield around
a ton... the mass of the laser initiatiors, etc, is another question. So my
mosquito estimate was at least an order of magnitude too large, but it
should still be able to produce a yield up to hundreds of kilos of TNT.
Mark
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