I think it's pretty clear, based on what we know about fission reactors, that making a fission device that does tremendous damage is primarily getting enough fissionable material close enough together to generate a runaway reaction. Turning that into a massive explosion (as opposed to just a big mess) probably requires some engineering, but I'll bet much of the information you need is fairly easily available. Doing this without killing or irradiating yourself may be secondary to some individuals. I believe some of the early tests were much more powerful than predicted, indicating that you may get more than you expected even by accident. E=mc^2 is a potent reaction. On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 5:42 PM, Thane Plambeck <tplambeck@gmail.com> wrote:
From an email I just received that was signed by the governor of California and William J Perry
"A quantity of HEU the size of a basketball would be sufficient to make an improvised nuclear bomb that had the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb and was small enough to fit into a delivery van. Such a bomb, delivered by van (or fishing boat) and detonated in one of our cities, could essentially destroy that city, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties, as well as major social, political, and economic disruptions."
My question: is this really true? I mean, supposing a small group of people accomplished getting that much HEU, is it really just a matter of "improvisation" to detonate it? I was under the perhaps mistaken impression that detonating it involved some serious engineering chops, especially if you dont want to kill or fatally irradiate yourself in the attempt.
-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://counterwave.com/ _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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