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The effects of a nuclear explosion on its immediate vicinity are typically much more destructive and multifaceted than those caused by conventional explosives.In most cases, the energy released from a nuclear weapon detonated within the lower atmosphere can be approximately divided into four basic categories: [1]
The United States completed six high-altitude nuclear tests in 1958, but the high-altitude tests of that year raised a number of questions. According to U.S. Government Report ADA955694 on the first successful test of the Fishbowl series, "Previous high-altitude nuclear tests: Teak, Orange, and Yucca, plus the three ARGUS shots were poorly instrumented and hastily executed.
A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction.The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device.
The results show that X-rays could play an even bigger role than the initial shock wave itself, though more data needs to be gathered to form a comprehensive asteroid defense plan.
A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as 600 pounds (270 kg) can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatonnes of TNT (5.0 PJ) (this is nearly the record for the ratio between yield and weapon weight, achieved with the W56). [2] A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation.
He estimates that full-scale nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. could kill up to 6 billion people. “The way you would kill most of them is not radiation,” he said. “Most of the deaths ...
For example, scientists worried that the first nuclear test might ignite the atmosphere. [55] [56] Early in the development of thermonuclear weapons there were some concerns that a fusion reaction could "ignite" the atmosphere in a chain reaction that would engulf Earth. Calculations showed the energy would dissipate far too quickly to sustain ...
The survey could not show at the time, nor in the decades that have elapsed, that the levels of global strontium-90 or fallout in general, were life-threatening, primarily because "50 times the strontium-90 from before nuclear testing" is a minuscule number, and multiplication of minuscule numbers results in only a slightly larger minuscule number.