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As a point of comparison in the chart below, the most likely nuclear weapons to be used against countervalue city targets in a global nuclear war are in the sub-megaton range. Weapons of yields from 100 to 475 kilotons have become the most numerous in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals; for example, the warheads equipping the Russian Bulava ...
For standard weapons above about 10 kilotons of yield, the lethal blast and thermal effects radius begins to exceed the lethal ionizing radiation radius. [11] [12] [13] Enhanced radiation weapons also fall into this same yield range and simply enhance the intensity and range of the neutron dose for a given yield.
The medical effects of the atomic bomb upon humans can be put into the four categories below, with the effects of larger thermonuclear weapons producing blast and thermal effects so large that there would be a negligible number of survivors close enough to the center of the blast who would experience prompt/acute radiation effects, which were observed after the 16 kiloton yield Hiroshima bomb ...
Since the E1 component of nuclear EMP depends on the prompt gamma-ray output, which was only 0.1% of yield in Starfish Prime but can be 0.5% of yield in low-yield pure nuclear fission weapons, a 10 kt (42 TJ) bomb can easily be 5 * 8%= 40% as powerful as the 1.44 Mt (6.0 PJ) Starfish Prime at producing EMP. [37] [unreliable source?]
Some tactical nuclear weapons have specific features meant to enhance their battlefield characteristics, such as variable yield, which allow their explosive power to be varied over a wide range for different situations, or enhanced radiation weapons (the so-called "neutron bombs"), which are meant to maximize ionizing radiation exposure and to ...
In the 1950s and 60's, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began developing safety regulations against nuclear fallout for civilian nuclear reactors. Because the effects of nuclear fallout are more widespread and longer lasting than other forms of energy production accidents, the AEC desired a more proactive response towards ...
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.
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are eliminated. Beginning with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and continuing through the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty , there have been many treaties to limit or reduce ...