NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Salted bomb

A salted bomb is a nuclear weapon constructed like fission-fusion-fission weapons, but instead of a fissionable jacket around the secondary stage fusion fuel, a blanket of a specially chosen isotope of a non-fissionable element is used, (cobalt-59 in the case of the cobalt bomb). This blanket captures the escaping neutrons from the secondary to breed a radioactive isotope that maximizes the radiation hazard from the weapon rather than generating additional explosive force from fast fission of U-238. The primary purpose of this weapon is to create extreme radioactive fallout to deny a region to an advancing army, a sort of wind-deployed mine-field. Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 kilometers (11 mi) above the hypocenter. ... The first nuclear weapons, though large, cumbersome and inefficient, provided the basic design building blocks of all future weapons. ... This article or section should include material from Fissile material In nuclear engineering, a fissile material is one that is capable of sustaining a chain reaction of nuclear fission. ... Isotopes are forms of an element, therefore their nuclei have the same atomic number â€” the number of protons in the nucleus â€” but different mass numbers because they contain different numbers of neutrons. ... General Name, Symbol, Number cobalt, Co, 27 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 9, 4, d Appearance metallic with gray tinge Atomic mass 58. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Properties In physics, the neutron is a subatomic particle with no net electric charge and a mass of 939. ... Radioactive decay is the set of various processes by which unstable atomic nuclei (nuclides) emit subatomic particles. ... Radiation in physics is a process of emission of energy or particles. ... There are two objects with this name: Unterseeboot 238 Uranium-238, the most common isotope of uranium This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Fallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion and is named from the fact that it falls out of the atmosphere in to which it is spread during the explosion. ...

Salting agents

Variable fallout effects can be obtained by using different salting isotopes. Gold has been proposed for short-term fallout (days), tantalum and zinc for fallout of intermediate duration (months), and cobalt for long term contamination (years). Arsenic and Sodium could also be used for very short-term fallouts. To be useful for salting, the blanket element must be abundant in the natural isotope, so that expensive purification is not needed. Also, the neutron-bred radioactive product must be a strong emitter of high energy penetrating gamma rays, either directly or through indirect decay pathways. General Name, Symbol, Number gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 6, d Appearance metallic yellow Atomic mass 196. ... General Name, Symbol, Number tantalum, Ta, 73 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 5, 6, d Appearance gray blue Atomic mass 180. ... General Name, Symbol, Number zinc, Zn, 30 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 12, 4, d Appearance bluish pale gray Atomic mass 65. ... General Name, Symbol, Number cobalt, Co, 27 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 9, 4, d Appearance metallic with gray tinge Atomic mass 58. ... General Name, Symbol, Number arsenic, As, 33 Chemical series metalloids Group, Period, Block 15, 4, p Appearance metallic gray Atomic mass 74. ... General Name, Symbol, Number sodium, Na, 11 Chemical series alkali metals Group, Period, Block 1, 3, s Appearance silvery white Atomic mass 22. ... This article is about electromagnetic radiation. ... Radioactive decay is the set of various processes by which unstable atomic nuclei (nuclides) emit subatomic particles (radiation). ...

An electronvolt (symbol: eV) is the amount of energy gained by a single unbound electron when it falls through an electrostatic potential difference of one volt. ...

Doomsday device

The idea of the cobalt bomb originated with Leo Szilard who publicized it in Feb. 1950, not as a serious proposal for weapon, but to point out that it would soon be possible in principle to build a doomsday device that could kill everybody on earth. To design such a theoretical weapon a radioactive isotope is needed that can be dispersed worldwide before it decays. Such dispersal takes many months to a few years so the half-life of Co-60 is ideal. Leó Szilárd (right) working with Albert Einstein. ... Many hypothetical doomsday devices are based on the fact that salted hydrogen bombs can create large amounts of nuclear fallout. ...

Initially gamma radiation fission products from an equivalent size fission-fusion-fission bomb are much more intense than Co-60: 15,000 times more intense at 1 hour; 35 times more intense at 1 week; 5 times more intense at 1 month; and about equal at 6 months. Thereafter fission drops off rapidly so that Co-60 fallout is 8 times more intense than fission at 1 year and 150 times more intense at 5 years.

What is unusual about this type of bomb is the combination of relatively long half-life (5.27 years) with an intensity of radiation still lethal to human beings. The fallout of other nuclear weapons has the appearance of sand or ground pumice, which falls back to the ground in short time, and can be filtered by even a handkerchief, unlike Cobalt-60. After fifteen to twenty years, the Cobalt-60 would have decayed to harmless Nickel-60 and the radiation would decrease by a factor of eight to sixteen, presumably allowing people to return. Half-Life For a quantity subject to exponential decay, the half-life is the time required for the quantity to fall to half of its initial value. ...

Zinc has been proposed as an alternate candidate for the "doomsday role". The advantage of Zn-64 is that its faster decay leads to greater initial intensity. Disadvantages are that since it makes up only half of natural zinc, it must either be isotopically enriched or the yield will be cut in half; that it is a weaker gamma emitter than Co-60, putting out only one-fourth the gamma intensity for the same mass; thus it will decay during the world-wide dispersal process. Assuming pure Zn-64 is used, the radiation intensity of Zn-65 would initially be twice as much as Co-60. This would decline to being equal in 8 months, in 5 years Co-60 would be 110 times as intense. Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes, for example separating natural uranium into enriched uranium and depleted uranium. ... // The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), either in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (million of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of...

Prolonged contamination is undesirable in a militarily useful radiological weapon, which would use local (as opposed to world-wide) contamination, and would require high initial intensities for a rapid effect. For this reason Zn-64 is possibly better suited to military applications than cobalt, but probably inferior to tantalum or gold. A radiological weapon (or radiological dispersion device, RDD) is any weapon that is designed to spread radioactive contamination, either to kill, or to deny the use of an area (a modern version of salting the earth) and consists of a device (such as a nuclear or conventional explosive) which spreads...

Compared to other nuclear weapons, a salted bomb of low explosive yield could kill off life in an area while leaving buildings and machinery intact, in this way a salted bomb is comparable to a neutron bomb. The advantage a salted bomb has over a neutron bomb is that it can be used over a much wider area and can render an area inaccessible for a controlled amount of time, disadvantages are that it is not likely to incapacitate immediately and it may rely on unpredictable winds to deliver the fallout to a target. A neutron bomb is a type of tactical nuclear weapon developed specifically to release a relatively large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation to harm biological tissues and electronic devices that are otherwise relatively protected from the heat blast. ...

Implementation

No salted weapons have ever been atmospherically tested, and as far as is publicly known none have ever been built. However, early nuclear weapons such as "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" tended to disperse large amounts of radioactive contamination in the form of nuclear fallout. During the 1950s, there was considerable debate over whether "clean" bombs could be produced, and these were often contrasted with "dirty" bombs. However, a number of very "dirty" thermonuclear devices have been developed and detonated, of which the final fission stage (usually a jacket of natural or enriched uranium) is essentially analogous to salting (for example, the Castle Bravo shot) although a uranium jacket’s primary use is to produce more explosive energy, more fallout is only a side-effect. The term dirty bomb is now mostly used for a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), a radiological weapon which combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. Preparation for an underground nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site in the 1980s. ... A postwar Little Boy casing mockup. ... A post-war Fat Man model. ... The radiation warning symbol (trefoil). ... Map of hypothetical fallout dispersal after a large-scale nuclear attack against the United States. ... A black and white photograph of the Castle Bravo mushroom cloud. ... The term dirty bomb is most often used to refer to a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), a radiological weapon which combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. ... A radiological weapon (or radiological dispersion device, RDD) is any weapon that is designed to spread radioactive contamination, either to kill, or to deny the use of an area (a modern version of salting the earth) and consists of a device (such as a nuclear or conventional explosive) which spreads... This article is concerned solely with chemical explosives. ...

The British did test a bomb that incorporated cobalt as an experimental radio-chemical tracer (Antler/Round 1, 14 September 1957). This 1 kt device was exploded at the Tadje site, Maralinga range, Australia. The experiment was regarded as a failure and not repeated [1]. September 14 is the 257th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (258th in leap years). ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

Contents

Salting agents

Doomsday device

Implementation

References

See also

Contents

Salting agents GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Doomsday device

Implementation

References

See also

Salting agents