Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
Reads like you've already visited the Dime Box. One need not travel the galaxy to find truth stranger than fiction. Wall Street has it all. Peeking under the skirts of a girl like Merrill Lynch can give you the drama of a lifetime. Richard Howdy Kyle, Writing fiction requires fictional imagination. By reading your comments, you are suggesting injecting truth to make it believable... That's not the way to tell a story at the Dime Box saloon best liar's contest. Hmmm...maybe I should have my intrepid heroes visit the Dime Box Saloon at some point in their travels. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
Thanks for the info. You learn something new everyday. But, most of those are short term halflifes, and most of the long termers are alpha and beta emitters, so still very little long term damage there. On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 7:57 PM, Kyle Mcallister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- leaking pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: fast neutrons can cause physical damage, de magnetize things, and cause other issues, but i was under the impression that it would only cause actual nuclear reactions with certain ALREADY radioactive species. and i cant find anything online to the contrary. Care to link some info on fast neutrons causing such reactions? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
In reply to leaking pen's message of Mon, 8 Dec 2008 07:10:18 -0700: Hi, Thanks for the info. You learn something new everyday. But, most of those are short term halflifes, and most of the long termers are alpha and beta emitters, so still very little long term damage there. Almost all radioactive substances are alpha and beta emitters, and the beta emitters are frequently also gamma-sources. Any of these three forms of ionizing radiation can cause biological damage, particularly when the substance makes up a part of your body. That's precisely why radioactive substances are dangerous. What else do you think causes long term damage? [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
alpha's are generally pretty tame. large sources of alpha can cause skin damage, but thats about as deep as it gets. Same with beta. Its the gamma that are a big issue. gamma goes through everything, alpha and beta get blocked by just about everything. On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 1:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In reply to leaking pen's message of Mon, 8 Dec 2008 07:10:18 -0700: Hi, Thanks for the info. You learn something new everyday. But, most of those are short term halflifes, and most of the long termers are alpha and beta emitters, so still very little long term damage there. Almost all radioactive substances are alpha and beta emitters, and the beta emitters are frequently also gamma-sources. Any of these three forms of ionizing radiation can cause biological damage, particularly when the substance makes up a part of your body. That's precisely why radioactive substances are dangerous. What else do you think causes long term damage? [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
In reply to leaking pen's message of Mon, 8 Dec 2008 14:29:34 -0700: Hi, [snip] alpha's are generally pretty tame. large sources of alpha can cause skin damage, but thats about as deep as it gets. Same with beta. Its the gamma that are a big issue. gamma goes through everything, alpha and beta get blocked by just about everything. This is largely true when the source of radiation is outside the body, but a very different story when the source is part of your body chemistry. Radioactive iron in particular would be a problem, because it gets taken up as part of the haemoglobin in your blood, and transported to every nook and cranny. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
In reply to Kyle Mcallister's message of Sun, 7 Dec 2008 12:45:35 -0800 (PST): Hi, [snip] All, Here's a question regarding a bit of fiction I am writing as a side project. What would the radiation effects be of a hypothetical pure-fusion nuclear weapon? That is, a nuclear bomb containing no fissile material whatsoever, triggered by some other means. Google neutron bomb. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
pure fusion would be a so called neutron bomb high emp, lots of radiation, little blast. if they worked, you could basically drop a few dozen, instantly kill most of the population, wait a year, go in and use all the land and buildings and such, no sweat, just some corpse clean up. basically, you WOULDNT use a pure fusion device to block icbms. On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Kyle Mcallister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All, Here's a question regarding a bit of fiction I am writing as a side project. What would the radiation effects be of a hypothetical pure-fusion nuclear weapon? That is, a nuclear bomb containing no fissile material whatsoever, triggered by some other means. The following scenarios are used in the storyline, and I'd like to get the physics reasonably correct: 1. Moderately-high altitude detonations over sea and/or largely uninhabited areas, with intent of destroying American, Russian, Chinese launched ICBMs, aircraft squadrons, etc. How much fallout (if any) is produced by the pure-fusion device, and will remains of the intercepted fissile-material-containing missiles cause fallout? I would assume it would. 2. Air blast of pure fusion weapon over land, for example, a city. Fallout? Neutron activation? How bad would this be, and would there be some fusion reaction schemes that could mitigate neutron activation? 3. Same as above, but a ground blast of the fusion weapon. Again, I'd assume neutron activation would be a factor, and is there some way to minimize it? Thanks in advance, --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
if its fiction anyways, go for an antimatter explosive. high blast, decent radiation, no fallout. On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Kyle Mcallister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All, Here's a question regarding a bit of fiction I am writing as a side project. What would the radiation effects be of a hypothetical pure-fusion nuclear weapon? That is, a nuclear bomb containing no fissile material whatsoever, triggered by some other means. The following scenarios are used in the storyline, and I'd like to get the physics reasonably correct: 1. Moderately-high altitude detonations over sea and/or largely uninhabited areas, with intent of destroying American, Russian, Chinese launched ICBMs, aircraft squadrons, etc. How much fallout (if any) is produced by the pure-fusion device, and will remains of the intercepted fissile-material-containing missiles cause fallout? I would assume it would. 2. Air blast of pure fusion weapon over land, for example, a city. Fallout? Neutron activation? How bad would this be, and would there be some fusion reaction schemes that could mitigate neutron activation? 3. Same as above, but a ground blast of the fusion weapon. Again, I'd assume neutron activation would be a factor, and is there some way to minimize it? Thanks in advance, --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
Google neutron bomb. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Already know about them, read Cohen's articles and all. What is described by 'neutron bomb' still contains fissile material...albeit not alot. Still some fallout, but the amount of fusion fuel is very limited, so there's a subkiloton explosion. Radius at which fast neutrons kill far exceeds zone of blast damage. I'll explain what I'm getting at in response to Leaking Pen's reply... --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
--- leaking pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: pure fusion would be a so called neutron bomb high emp, lots of radiation, little blast. if they worked, you could basically drop a few dozen, instantly kill most of the population, wait a year, go in and use all the land and buildings and such, no sweat, just some corpse clean up. basically, you WOULDNT use a pure fusion device to block icbms. We're not talking the same thing, at least on a sense of 'relative scaling'. For instance, let's say you have a bomb which produces a blast of 57 megatons, 97% of which comes from fusion alone (very clean). As luck (?!) has it, this was built and tested by the USSR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba If we knock off that 3% and use what's left as a basis for pure-fusion (in my scenario), we've got a bit more than a 55 megaton bomb. That is not a neutron bomb, it's a crustbuster. Blast damage would far exceed the neutron lethal radius, and thermal burns from the long lasting fireball would far exceed even that. The general idea is: 'these guys' know how to build a weapon that can be scaled dependant almost entirely on how much fusion fuel (probably lithium-6 deuteride) is present in said device. A wee bit gets you a quonset-hut-crusher. A bucketload gets you a mushroom cloud bigger than you can shake a stick at. I *don't* want to touch anti-matter, for a couple reasons... 1. It's been done to death worse than Dracula. 2. There's no easy way to make it actually explode with a nuclear-level blast. As far as we know, it just blows apart before it reacts efficiently (you can't mix the stuff with its own weight in normal matter fast enough) and what's left 'burns' slowly. Bad, yes, but not quite the same thing. 3. It hints of Star Trek, which ain't what I'm aiming for. Obviously a lot of neutrons are going to be released, unless there is some other reaction scheme that can be nearly or totally aneutronic. p + B? I don't know if that could ever be 'bombified.' So my concern is, how much fallout could we expect due to neutron activation? --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
Well, since I have reduced Bohr orbitals on the mind today, and Robin passed on the opportunity ... ... if antimatter is too problematic for the plot (many experts do not believe antimatter will ever be feasible in a weapon either due to containment)... and neutron bombs are too dirty... then: ... it might be feasible (certainly in fiction) to accumulated sufficient amounts of hydrino (deuterino) compounds of deep redundancy. Lithium and boron would be good carriers. Properly done, following an explosion - you would end up with mostly helium ash and lots of gammas. You may have noticed if you follow the UFO scene (I do not but I get google alerts for the hydrino) that recently many of them have been jumping on the hydrino-power bandwagon, supposedly for their legitimizing their obsession, Ha! which is kind of hoot in a way ... but the result is that most everyone who enjoys this kind of fiction will probably already have heard of the hydrino technology these days, unlike a few years ago... Since boron-10 and the deuterino would both be nuclear bosons - you could add as a plot element that the weapon only functions when held at a temperature very near to absolute zero - Jones - Original Message From: Kyle Mcallister [EMAIL PROTECTED] Google neutron bomb. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk Already know about them, read Cohen's articles and all. What is described by 'neutron bomb' still contains fissile material...albeit not alot. Still some fallout, but the amount of fusion fuel is very limited, so there's a subkiloton explosion. Radius at which fast neutrons kill far exceeds zone of blast damage. I'll explain what I'm getting at in response to Leaking Pen's reply... --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
fallout is the radioactive material created by the fission, that slowly falls out of the sky. neutrons are NOT fallout, they are part of the radiation given by the reaction. there , passed through, gone. big pulse. Even if you had NO fission whatsoever, it would still be considered a neutron bomb, wouldn't it? Simply put, its not the best method of taking out other in flight missiles. emp devices, or midair cluster or fuel air (or clustered fuel air) would work a lot better. On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Kyle Mcallister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- leaking pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: pure fusion would be a so called neutron bomb high emp, lots of radiation, little blast. if they worked, you could basically drop a few dozen, instantly kill most of the population, wait a year, go in and use all the land and buildings and such, no sweat, just some corpse clean up. basically, you WOULDNT use a pure fusion device to block icbms. We're not talking the same thing, at least on a sense of 'relative scaling'. For instance, let's say you have a bomb which produces a blast of 57 megatons, 97% of which comes from fusion alone (very clean). As luck (?!) has it, this was built and tested by the USSR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba If we knock off that 3% and use what's left as a basis for pure-fusion (in my scenario), we've got a bit more than a 55 megaton bomb. That is not a neutron bomb, it's a crustbuster. Blast damage would far exceed the neutron lethal radius, and thermal burns from the long lasting fireball would far exceed even that. The general idea is: 'these guys' know how to build a weapon that can be scaled dependant almost entirely on how much fusion fuel (probably lithium-6 deuteride) is present in said device. A wee bit gets you a quonset-hut-crusher. A bucketload gets you a mushroom cloud bigger than you can shake a stick at. I *don't* want to touch anti-matter, for a couple reasons... 1. It's been done to death worse than Dracula. 2. There's no easy way to make it actually explode with a nuclear-level blast. As far as we know, it just blows apart before it reacts efficiently (you can't mix the stuff with its own weight in normal matter fast enough) and what's left 'burns' slowly. Bad, yes, but not quite the same thing. 3. It hints of Star Trek, which ain't what I'm aiming for. Obviously a lot of neutrons are going to be released, unless there is some other reaction scheme that can be nearly or totally aneutronic. p + B? I don't know if that could ever be 'bombified.' So my concern is, how much fallout could we expect due to neutron activation? --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
Howdy Kyle, Writing fiction requires fictional imagination. By reading your comments, you are suggesting injecting truth to make it believable... That's not the way to tell a story at the Dime Box saloon best liar's contest. If you can't come up with a totally unbelievable lie.. just stay home. Last year's contest was won by a farmer told a story about a dry year in west Texas.. so dry he had to run his windmill for water.. there was so little wind that he tried taking off all but one blade off the windmill, didn't help.. tried sheep grazing off the pasture.. didn't help... fiinally out of frustration he took the top two strands off the bobwire fence to get enough wind to turn the windmill.. What was the contest prize?? In Texas, we send the best lairs to congress where they can do us the most good. Richard
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
Oops!, I mean't to wrrite In Texas we send the best liars to congress where they can do us the most harm. Richard
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
fast neutrons can cause physical damage, de magnetize things, and cause other issues, but i was under the impression that it would only cause actual nuclear reactions with certain ALREADY radioactive species. and i cant find anything online to the contrary. Care to link some info on fast neutrons causing such reactions? On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 5:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In reply to leaking pen's message of Sun, 7 Dec 2008 16:52:56 -0700: Hi, [snip] fallout is the radioactive material created by the fission, that slowly falls out of the sky. neutrons are NOT fallout, they are part of the radiation given by the reaction. there , passed through, gone. big pulse. While true, all those energetic neutrons have to go somewhere. They will do two things:- 1) While still energetic they will damage other nuclei, producing radioactive species. 2) When absorbed by other nuclei, they will also create radioactive species. In short it isn't *really* going to be a clean bomb. Even if you had NO fission whatsoever, it would still be considered a neutron bomb, wouldn't it? I agree. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
--- leaking pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: fast neutrons can cause physical damage, de magnetize things, and cause other issues, but i was under the impression that it would only cause actual nuclear reactions with certain ALREADY radioactive species. and i cant find anything online to the contrary. Care to link some info on fast neutrons causing such reactions? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_activation --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While true, all those energetic neutrons have to go somewhere. They will do two things:- 1) While still energetic they will damage other nuclei, producing radioactive species. 2) When absorbed by other nuclei, they will also create radioactive species. In short it isn't *really* going to be a clean bomb. That's what I would think. Far cleaner than anything we have today, but if it is ground blasted, there's got to be a little something left. My question was basically, how bad would it compare to something manufactured with today's technology. IF I am correct in my thinking... 1. Ground-blast leaves some (maybe not too much) fallout, probably far less than a normal fission-fusion ground blast. 2. Air blast leaves very little, depending on how far the neutrons are able to go and be absorbed by atoms in dust and debris. Widespread destruction, thermal and blast effects, initial ionizing radiation, but little lasting radioactivity. March in a few days later. 3. Higher altitude aerial blast (something like a Nike Zeus), for all intents, no fallout. Little to speak of nearby to activate. Some remnants of the bomb parts, destroyed missiles, etc. might become a bit radioactive, but not like Castle Bravo did. Incidentally, while following up on neutron bombs, I found a document by Sam Cohen which discusses pure-fusion bombs and lack of fallout. I guess the idea is, there's very little produced even by activation. My only beef with calling a multimegaton pure fusion nuke a 'neutron bomb' is simply that the neutron effects radius is far overshadowed by blast and thermal effect radii. The Tsar Bomb obviously put out more neutrons than a 10 ton yield neutron bomb...but no one is calling the King of All Bombs a neutron bomb. :) But I guess in the end it boils down to this: it will still kill ya if you're unlucky enough to be nearby. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:For the resident nuclear experts...semi-OT?
In reply to leaking pen's message of Sun, 7 Dec 2008 19:03:42 -0700: Hi, [snip] fast neutrons can cause physical damage, de magnetize things, and cause other issues, but i was under the impression that it would only cause actual nuclear reactions with certain ALREADY radioactive species. and i cant find anything online to the contrary. Care to link some info on fast neutrons causing such reactions? Google spallation reactions. The neutron from a D-T reaction is 14 MeV, and the binding energy of most nucleons in any given nucleus is roughly 6 MeV, so the fast neutron certainly has enough energy to knock one free. Removal of a nucleon from a stable nucleus (or addition of one) often (but not always) results in the creation of a radio-isotope. Actually I was a bit surprised to find that generally such isotopes formed from the lighter elements have a rather short half life (seconds to minutes). A couple of important reactions with longer half lives are:- Fe56 - n - Fe55 with a half life of 2.7 years and Cl35 + n - Cl36 with a half life of 30 years. Both of these are important in this regard because both elements are common in the environment, and both are readily incorporated into the human body. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
