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Plutonium recovered from LWR spent fuel, while not weapons grade, can be used to produce nuclear weapons at all levels of sophistication, [25] though in simple designs it may produce only a fizzle yield. [26] Weapons made with reactor-grade plutonium would require special cooling to keep them in storage and ready for use. [27]
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.
USSR, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, yield of 50 megatonnes, (50 million tonnes of TNT). In its "final" form (i.e. with a depleted uranium tamper instead of one made of lead) it would have been 100 megatonnes. All nuclear testing as of 1996 510,300 2,135,000 Total energy expended during all nuclear testing. [5]
The first nuclear explosive devices provided the basic building blocks of future weapons. Pictured is the Gadget device being prepared for the Trinity nuclear test.. Nuclear Weapons Design are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package [1] of a nuclear weapon to detonate.
Kazakhstan had 1,400 Soviet-era nuclear weapons on its territory and transferred them all to Russia by 1995, after Kazakhstan acceded to the NPT. [135] Ukraine had as many as 3,000 nuclear weapons deployed on its territory when it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, equivalent to the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
The pits of the first nuclear weapons were solid, with an urchin neutron initiator in their center. The Gadget and Fat Man used pits made of 6.2 kg of solid hot pressed plutonium-gallium alloy (at 400 °C and 200 MPa in steel dies – 750 °F and 29,000 psi) half-spheres of 9.2 cm (3.6 in) diameter, with a 2.5 cm (1 in) internal cavity for the initiator.
U.S. officials view a W54 nuclear warhead (with a 10- or 20-ton explosive yield) as used on the Davy Crockett recoilless gun, one of the smallest nuclear weapons ever made. A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW) [1] is a nuclear weapon that is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly ...
Nuclear power plants operate between these two points of reactivity, while above the prompt critical point is the domain of nuclear weapons, pulsed reactors designs such as TRIGA research reactors and the pulsed nuclear thermal rocket, and some nuclear power accidents, such as the 1961 US SL-1 accident and 1986 Soviet Chernobyl disaster.