Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Nuclear Weapon Yield shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Nuclear Weapon Yield offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Nuclear Weapon Yield at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Nuclear Weapon Yield? Wrong! If the Nuclear Weapon Yield is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Nuclear Weapon Yield then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Nuclear Weapon Yield? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Nuclear Weapon Yield and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Nuclear Weapon Yield wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Nuclear Weapon Yield then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Nuclear Weapon Yield site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Nuclear Weapon Yield, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Nuclear Weapon Yield, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy, called the yield, discharged when a nuclear weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), either in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (millions of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of TNT = 4.184 TJ). Because the precise amount of energy released by TNT is and was subject to measurement uncertainties, especially at the dawn of the nuclear age, the accepted convention is that one kt of TNT is simply defined to be 10^{12} calories equivalent, this being very roughly equal to the energy yield of 1,000 tons of TNT.

Examples of nuclear weapon yields In order of increasing yield (most yield figures are approximate):







As a comparison, the blast yield of the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (perhaps the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever designed) is 0.011 kt, and that of the Oklahoma City bombing, using a truck-based fertilizer bomb, was 0.002 kt. Most List of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions are considerably smaller than even what are considered to be very small nuclear weapons.

Yield limits The yield-to-weight ratio is the amount of weapon yield compared to the mass of the weapon. The theoretical maximum yield-to-weight ratio for fusion weapons is 6 Megatons per metric ton (6 Mt/t). The practical achievable limit is somewhat lower. Though the United States did claim they had the capability of tipping a Titan II ICBM with a 35 Mt fusion bomb. If this is the case the yield to weight ratio would be about 9.5 Mt/t (kt/kg). For current US weapons 600 kt/t (2.5 TJ/kg) to 2.2 Mt/t (9.2 TJ/kg). By comparison, for the Davy Crockett (nuclear device) it was 0.4 - 40 kt/t (0.002 - 0.167 TJ/kg), for Little Boy 4 kt/t, and for the Tsar Bomba 2 Mt/t (8 TJ/kg) (deliberately reduced from the possible maximum which was twice as much), and for the Mk-41 5.2 Mt/t.

The largest pure-fission bomb ever constructed had a 500 kt yield, which is probably in the range of the upper limit on such designs. Fusion boosting could likely raise the efficiency of such a weapon significantly, but eventually all fission-based weapons have an upper yield due to the difficulties of dealing with large critical masses. However there is no known upper yield limit for a fusion (e.g, hydrogen) bomb. In principle a fusion bomb could be many thousand megatons. Because of the maximum theoretical yield-to-weight ratio is about 6Mt/t, and the maximum achievable ratio about 5.2 MT/t, there is a practical limit on air delivery of the weapon.

For example, if the full payload of 250 t of the Antonov An-225 could be used, the limit would be 250 t * 5.2 Mt/t, or 1300 Mt. Likewise the maximum limit of a missile-delivered weapon is determined by the missile payload capacity. The large Russian SS-18 ICBM has a payload capacity of 7,200 kg, so the calculated maximum delivered yield would be 37.4 Mt. In fact the SS-18 mod 1 yield for a single warhead is about 24 Mt. In more recent practice, large single warheads are seldom used, since smaller MIRV warheads are more destructive for a given total yield or payload capacity.

Calculating yields and controversy Yields of nuclear explosions can be very hard to calculate, even using numbers as rough as in the kiloton or megaton range (much less down to the resolution of individual terajoules). Even under very controlled conditions, precise yields can be very hard to determine, and for less controlled conditions the margins of error can be quite large. Yields can be calculated in a number of ways, including calculations based on blast size, blast brightness, seismographic data, and the strength of the shock wave. Enrico Fermi famously made a (very) rough calculation of the yield of the Trinity test by dropping small pieces of paper in the air and measuring at how far they were moved by the shock wave of the explosion.



A good approximation of the yield of the Trinity test device was obtained from simple dimensional analysis by the British physicist Geoffrey Ingram Taylor. Taylor noted that the radius R of the blast should initially depend only on the energy E of the explosion, the time t after the detonation, and the density ρ of the air. The only dimensionless number that can be constructed from these quantities is:

c={\frac {E{t}^{2-->{\rho\,{R}^{5-->}

Determining the value of c theoretically would require an understanding of the complicated fluid dynamics of the problem, but on general grounds Taylor expected it to be of order of magnitude 1 (experimentally it turns out to be about 1.03). Using the picture of the Trinity test shown here (which had been publicly released by the U.S. government and published in Life (magazine) magazine), Taylor estimated that at t = 0.025 s the blast radius was 140 m. Taking ρ to be 1 kg/m³ and solving for E, he obtained that the yield was about Joule, or 22 kilotons. This very simple argument agrees within 10% with the official value of the bomb's yield, 20 kilotons, which at the time that Taylor published his result was considered highly-classified information. (See G. I. Taylor, Proc. Roy. Soc. London A201, pp. 159, 175 (1950).)

Where this data is not available, as in a number of cases, precise yields have been in dispute, especially when they are tied to questions of politics. The weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example, were highly individual and very idiosyncratic designs, and gauging their yield retrospectively has been quite difficult. The Hiroshima bomb, "Little Boy", is estimated to have been between 12 and 18 kt (a 20% margin of error), while the Nagasaki bomb, "Fat Man", is estimated to be between 18 and 23 kt (a 10% margin of error). Such apparently small changes in values can be important when trying to use the data from these bombings as reflective of how other bombs would behave in combat, and also result in differing assessments of how many "Hiroshima bombs" other weapons are equivalent to (for example, the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb was equivalent to either 867 or 578 Hiroshima weapons — a rhetorically quite substantial difference — depending on whether one uses the high or low figure for the calculation). Other disputed yields have included the massive Tsar Bomba, whose yield was claimed between being "only" 50 Mt or at a maximum of 57 Mt by differing political figures, either as a way for hyping the power of the bomb or as an attempt to undercut it.

Nuclear testing yields, as in the Tsar Bomba example, can also be used as a way of reflecting upon technical expertise, and claiming higher yields or accusations of lower yields can be used as a way of promoting or disparaging the technical abilities of a nuclear program. When India claimed to have successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb in their 1998 Operation Shakti tests, many Western observers relied on analysis of seismographic data to determine whether the Indian tests reflected a successful hydrogen bomb detonation. Some have alleged that India's reported yields have been higher than their actual test yields, a move which would apparently be for political purposes (to claim more nuclear ability than their rival Pakistan, for example, or to demonstrate their military might to other potential rivals such as nearby China) if true.

See also

External links The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy, called the yield, discharged when a nuclear weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), either in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (millions of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of TNT = 4.184 TJ). Because the precise amount of energy released by TNT is and was subject to measurement uncertainties, especially at the dawn of the nuclear age, the accepted convention is that one kt of TNT is simply defined to be 10^{12} calories equivalent, this being very roughly equal to the energy yield of 1,000 tons of TNT.

Examples of nuclear weapon yields In order of increasing yield (most yield figures are approximate):







As a comparison, the blast yield of the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (perhaps the most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever designed) is 0.011 kt, and that of the Oklahoma City bombing, using a truck-based fertilizer bomb, was 0.002 kt. Most List of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions are considerably smaller than even what are considered to be very small nuclear weapons.

Yield limits The yield-to-weight ratio is the amount of weapon yield compared to the mass of the weapon. The theoretical maximum yield-to-weight ratio for fusion weapons is 6 Megatons per metric ton (6 Mt/t). The practical achievable limit is somewhat lower. Though the United States did claim they had the capability of tipping a Titan II ICBM with a 35 Mt fusion bomb. If this is the case the yield to weight ratio would be about 9.5 Mt/t (kt/kg). For current US weapons 600 kt/t (2.5 TJ/kg) to 2.2 Mt/t (9.2 TJ/kg). By comparison, for the Davy Crockett (nuclear device) it was 0.4 - 40 kt/t (0.002 - 0.167 TJ/kg), for Little Boy 4 kt/t, and for the Tsar Bomba 2 Mt/t (8 TJ/kg) (deliberately reduced from the possible maximum which was twice as much), and for the Mk-41 5.2 Mt/t.

The largest pure-fission bomb ever constructed had a 500 kt yield, which is probably in the range of the upper limit on such designs. Fusion boosting could likely raise the efficiency of such a weapon significantly, but eventually all fission-based weapons have an upper yield due to the difficulties of dealing with large critical masses. However there is no known upper yield limit for a fusion (e.g, hydrogen) bomb. In principle a fusion bomb could be many thousand megatons. Because of the maximum theoretical yield-to-weight ratio is about 6Mt/t, and the maximum achievable ratio about 5.2 MT/t, there is a practical limit on air delivery of the weapon.

For example, if the full payload of 250 t of the Antonov An-225 could be used, the limit would be 250 t * 5.2 Mt/t, or 1300 Mt. Likewise the maximum limit of a missile-delivered weapon is determined by the missile payload capacity. The large Russian SS-18 ICBM has a payload capacity of 7,200 kg, so the calculated maximum delivered yield would be 37.4 Mt. In fact the SS-18 mod 1 yield for a single warhead is about 24 Mt. In more recent practice, large single warheads are seldom used, since smaller MIRV warheads are more destructive for a given total yield or payload capacity.

Calculating yields and controversy Yields of nuclear explosions can be very hard to calculate, even using numbers as rough as in the kiloton or megaton range (much less down to the resolution of individual terajoules). Even under very controlled conditions, precise yields can be very hard to determine, and for less controlled conditions the margins of error can be quite large. Yields can be calculated in a number of ways, including calculations based on blast size, blast brightness, seismographic data, and the strength of the shock wave. Enrico Fermi famously made a (very) rough calculation of the yield of the Trinity test by dropping small pieces of paper in the air and measuring at how far they were moved by the shock wave of the explosion.



A good approximation of the yield of the Trinity test device was obtained from simple dimensional analysis by the British physicist Geoffrey Ingram Taylor. Taylor noted that the radius R of the blast should initially depend only on the energy E of the explosion, the time t after the detonation, and the density ρ of the air. The only dimensionless number that can be constructed from these quantities is:

c={\frac {E{t}^{2-->{\rho\,{R}^{5-->}

Determining the value of c theoretically would require an understanding of the complicated fluid dynamics of the problem, but on general grounds Taylor expected it to be of order of magnitude 1 (experimentally it turns out to be about 1.03). Using the picture of the Trinity test shown here (which had been publicly released by the U.S. government and published in Life (magazine) magazine), Taylor estimated that at t = 0.025 s the blast radius was 140 m. Taking ρ to be 1 kg/m³ and solving for E, he obtained that the yield was about Joule, or 22 kilotons. This very simple argument agrees within 10% with the official value of the bomb's yield, 20 kilotons, which at the time that Taylor published his result was considered highly-classified information. (See G. I. Taylor, Proc. Roy. Soc. London A201, pp. 159, 175 (1950).)

Where this data is not available, as in a number of cases, precise yields have been in dispute, especially when they are tied to questions of politics. The weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example, were highly individual and very idiosyncratic designs, and gauging their yield retrospectively has been quite difficult. The Hiroshima bomb, "Little Boy", is estimated to have been between 12 and 18 kt (a 20% margin of error), while the Nagasaki bomb, "Fat Man", is estimated to be between 18 and 23 kt (a 10% margin of error). Such apparently small changes in values can be important when trying to use the data from these bombings as reflective of how other bombs would behave in combat, and also result in differing assessments of how many "Hiroshima bombs" other weapons are equivalent to (for example, the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb was equivalent to either 867 or 578 Hiroshima weapons — a rhetorically quite substantial difference — depending on whether one uses the high or low figure for the calculation). Other disputed yields have included the massive Tsar Bomba, whose yield was claimed between being "only" 50 Mt or at a maximum of 57 Mt by differing political figures, either as a way for hyping the power of the bomb or as an attempt to undercut it.

Nuclear testing yields, as in the Tsar Bomba example, can also be used as a way of reflecting upon technical expertise, and claiming higher yields or accusations of lower yields can be used as a way of promoting or disparaging the technical abilities of a nuclear program. When India claimed to have successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb in their 1998 Operation Shakti tests, many Western observers relied on analysis of seismographic data to determine whether the Indian tests reflected a successful hydrogen bomb detonation. Some have alleged that India's reported yields have been higher than their actual test yields, a move which would apparently be for political purposes (to claim more nuclear ability than their rival Pakistan, for example, or to demonstrate their military might to other potential rivals such as nearby China) if true.

See also

External links

Nuclear weapon yield - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy, called the yield, discharged when a nuclear weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of ...

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US 'plans new nuclear weapons'
The minutes, which Bush administration officials confirm as genuine, also talk of lower yield nuclear weapons being developed with reduced collateral damage.

Nuclear weapon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nuclear weapon design; Nuclear weapon yield; Effects of nuclear explosions; Neutron bomb; History History of nuclear weapons; Manhattan Project; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Lawrence ...

Disarmament Diplomacy: - Concerns Rise in US over Low-Yield Nuclear ...
Disarmament Diplomacy Issue No. 50, September 2000 Concerns Rise in US over Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons. On September 11, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) wrote to Senator ...

Disarmament Diplomacy: - News Review
Disarmament Diplomacy Issue No. 62, January - February 2002 News Review US Keeps Options Open on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons. On December 19, a Report to Congress on the Defeat of ...

Bush to Face Opposition on Low-Yield Nuclear Weapon
IWS is an online resource that aims to stimulate debate about a range of subjects from information security to information operations and e-commerce.

Name
Variable yield fission weapon. This was a nuclear depth charge for the Royal Navy. Withdrawn from Service by June 1992. Possibly shorter and rocket boosted for helicopter use.

Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran - Times Online
... plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield ...

Dial-A-Yield (variable yield nuclear weapon) - What does DAY stand for ...
Acronym Definition; DAY: Dial-A-Yield (variable yield nuclear weapon) DAY: Dayton, OH, USA - James M Cox Dayton International (Airport Code)

Observer | Bush plans new nuclear weapons
The move effectively ends a 10-year ban on research into 'low-yield' nuclear weapons. Critics fear it may lead other countries to push ahead with developing such weapons.

 

Nuclear Weapon Yield



 
Copyright © 2008 Hintcenter.com - All rights reserved.
Home | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
All Trademarks belong to their repective owners. Many aspects of this page are used under
commercial commons license from Yahoo!