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The weapon is notable for being the smallest nuclear weapon in both weight and yield to have entered US service. It was a compact implosion device containing plutonium-239 as its fissile material, [ 1 ] and in its various versions and mods it had a yield of 10 to 1,000 tons of TNT (42 to 4,184 gigajoules ).
The components of a B83 nuclear bomb used by the United States. This is a list of nuclear weapons listed according to country of origin, and then by type within the states. . The United States, Russia, China and India are known to possess a nuclear triad, being capable to deliver nuclear weapons by land, sea and
A nuclear weapon [a] is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.
Its explosive yield was extremely small for a nuclear weapon. [4] [5] In the mid-1970s, debate shifted from the possibility of developing such a device for the military to concerns over its possible use in nuclear terrorism. [6] The concept became a staple of the spy thriller genre in the later Cold War era. [7]
The history of the W48 began in April 1954 when the US Army expressed interest in a small low-yield nuclear projectile. The initial development was the W33 8-inch (200 mm) gun-type projectile but the Army was interested in an improved or an even smaller diameter weapon. [2]
Tactical nuclear weapons were a large part of the peak nuclear weapons stockpile levels during the Cold War. US scientists with a full-scale cut-away model of the W48, a very small tactical nuclear weapon with an explosive yield equivalent to 72 tons of TNT (0.072 kiloton). Around 100 of such shells were produced during the Cold War.
Despite having an almost-exact explosive-yield and assembly method as Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon ever deployed in combat, the W9 nuclear artillery-shell test-fired during Operation Upshot-Knothole series of tests was far smaller and lighter than its predecessors; a result of the evolving efficiencies of new nuclear-weapon designs.
Total weight of nuclear material and bomb was 98.8 - 100.2 kg Hiroshima's "Little Boy" gravity bomb: 13–18 54–75 Gun type uranium-235 fission bomb (the first of the two nuclear weapons that have been used in warfare). 64 kg of Uranium-235, about 1.38% of the uranium fissioned Nagasaki's "Fat Man" gravity bomb 19–23 79–96