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Subject: Future of Nuclear Warheads
Roman    7/5/2004 8:07:39 PM
What do you think will the next (4th) generation of nuclear warheads be like? Are they likely to be the pure fusion warheads, or will fission still be used as a trigger?
 
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bobfall2005    RE:Nuclear Weapons keep the balance of powers   4/1/2005 11:50:06 PM
I do not believe that the major powers will stop research into nuclear weapons. 1.The current nuclear powers want the best weapons they can get. 2.The major powers do not have the corner on scientfic thought. If a major development is possible, than science will explore it. If the major powers will not go there, someone will. That is like saying we will not work on a weapon system, because that would force other countries to work on it. There is an excellant chance they will work on it anyway. Again, I find the whole deterrance(SP)theory, hard to swallow. 1. It assumes you know who attacked you with nukes. If they decide to hide their role in the attack, who do you go after? 2. Suppose they don't care if you go after them. Suppose they are willing to die for a cause. Suppose they are willing to sacarfice their country. 3. What if the person is crazy, who attacked you? 4. Suppose the country is willing to absorb more damage than your country can do to them? 5. Suppose one country spent its money on nukes and not on security, Command and control systems, or earily warning sustems. I think fear of a general nuclear war, helped keep the "peace". But, that was under some very special conditions. Both sides where sane, they usually both had a balance of power, and we had small number of sides. The UN's nuclear watchdog agency reported that 40+ plus countries could have nuclear weapons in 5 years, if they wanted to start today. That makes for a lot of sides, a lot more chances of "insane" or motivated people getting them, or a lot more chances for plain bad luck. I'm not saying do away with nuclear weapons. That will not happen. I believe deterance(spelled wrong sorry) has some valve. If you have the will and ability to back it up. But, that will not prevent these weapons from being used. They exist and can not be un-invented. If not now than soon they will get into the hands of someone who will use them try to break the balance of power. I belive that they have been de-stablizing the world and that will continue to do so. Bob
 
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hybrid    RE:Nuclear Weapons keep the balance of powers   4/2/2005 8:01:30 PM
Deterrance theory works when there are nukes in the hands of few people/countries. Under this kind of situation its a lot easier to figure out who had or launched nukes (for instance like in 60s there weren't too many powers out there that had nukes). Nowadays deterrence isn't going to work much except against the more obvious nuclear powers and even then to a limited fashion since if any of them were to get truly hostile the potential of giving nukes to terrorists to supply plausible deniability is too great. Which leads us in turn to decide whether pre-emptive action must be taken against the countries or powers that are the most threatening in terms of taking hostile terrorist acts.
 
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   RE:Future of Nuclear Warheads   4/5/2005 4:57:13 AM
We've reached an impasse in output. Fact is, you can't just dump more fuel into a bomb and expect it to contribute usefully to yield. Rapid assembly of a supercritical mass (Uranium and Plutonium) is ALWAYS impossible, because stray neutrons are left behind to bounce around immediately after the reaction commences, resulting in pre-detonation (all weapons predetonate). The more fuel you dump into the reactor, the greater the chances a stray neutron will strike something explosive, and therefore the greater the chances of predetonation. This means you can accomplish a bigger explosion using less fuel in some cases, and that is where the slope begins to slope sharply upward (it is no longer practical to add fuel for gains in explosive yield). The Soviets achieved roughly 50 megatons with the Tsar Bomb, but even this may have been well and above the practical end-point (it was much too large, and required too much fuel). You're probably looking at practical limits of 30 megatons in an uncontrolled (explosive) reaction. As for fusion detonators absent a fission trigger, such a concept is impossible. The energy required to coerce a fusion reaction is simply too great to be accomplished without it (it is actually temperature-pressure which is the actor in a fission trigger, but of course the pressure can be achieved by other means, but these means require an energy input). A battery-powered bomb seems unlikely. If nuclear weapons development proceeds, it will be towards smaller bombs, rather than larger..
 
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Roman    RE:Future of Nuclear Warheads   4/5/2005 2:09:08 PM
That is indeed the question - what 'features' will be the aim of future nuclear warhead developments? I also do not think it will be yield. That said, I do not think it will be miniaturization either - I think we have reached close to the practical limit of miniaturization of nuclear warheads and they are so small already that incentive to get much smaller is not very strong. Personally, I think future developments of nuclear warheads will concentrate on durability, reliability and robustness in order to ensure effectiveness of nuclear arsenals and to make sure they do not need to be replaced so frequently. Other potential developments, IMO, are fusion weapons without fishion triggers, but this is far more far fetched. The way I envision this to work, is to have a staged fusion reaction: a non nuclear energy source generates energy for a magnetic field or a laser that initiates fusion in a tiny pellet of material. This, in turn, is then used to initiate the next, larger, fusion stage and finally that initiates fusion in the main stage (or stages - some fusion weapons have many stages even now). Pure-fusion weapons have been the holy grail of nuclear weapons development for some time now, but as far as we know none have been developed yet (unless in secret & undisclosed).
 
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   RE:Future of Nuclear Warheads   4/5/2005 5:07:46 PM
A magnetic field couldn't initiate a fusion reaction, only contain it. If you're containing the reaction, it won't do very much damage. One could theoretically use a laser to push the atoms into one another, but you would require a device many times the size and power of any laser ever built. And that laser would need an energy source. Now you're looking at a bomb the size of a small house. You are correct that we have reached practical limits in dimensional size of the warheads. I was refering to smaller yields. The challenge is having enough useable fuel in the weapon to guarantee detonation (reaction), while keeping the yield below several hundred kilotons. Mini-nukes present a much greater engineering challenge than megaton-range weapons.
 
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