Nucular War Essay Research Paper NUCLEAR

Nucular War Essay, Research Paper

NUCLEAR WARFARE

Nuclear Weapons are explosive devices made to release nuclear energy. The first atomic bomb, which was tested on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, represented a completely new type of artificial explosive. All explosives get their power from the rapid burning or decomposition of some chemical compound. Such chemical processes release only the energy of the outermost electrons in the atom.

Nuclear explosives involve energy sources within the core, or nucleus, of the atom. The A-bomb gained its power from the splitting, or fission, of all the atomic nuclei in several kilograms of plutonium. A sphere about the size of a baseball produced an explosion equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.

The A-bomb was constructed, and tested by the Manhattan Project, a big United States enterprise that was established in August 1942, during World War II. It was made by a group scientist including the physicists Enrico Fermi and J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the chemist Harold Urey, and was in charge by an U.S. Army engineer, Major General Lesle Groves.

After the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission became in charge of all nuclear matters, including weapons research. Other types of bombs were developed to tap the energy of light elements, such as hydrogen. In these bombs the source of energy is the fusion process, in which nuclei of the isotopes of hydrogen combine to form a heavier helium nucleus. This weapons research has resulted in the production of bombs that range in power from a fraction of a kiloton to many megatons. The size of the bomb has been made smaller helping the development of nuclear artillery shells and small missiles that can be fired from portable launchers in the field. Nuclear bombs were originally developed as strategic weapons to be carried by large bombers; nuclear weapons are now available for a variety of both strategic and tactical applications. Not only can they be delivered by different types of aircraft, but rockets and guided missiles of many sizes can now carry nuclear warheads and can be launched from the ground, the air, or underwater. Large rockets can carry multiple warheads for delivery to separate targets.

Detonation of Atomic Bombs

Many different systems have been made to detonate the atomic bomb. The best system is the gun-type weapon. The atomic bomb exploded by the United States over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, was a gun-type weapon. It had the energy of anywhere between 12.5 to 15 kilotons of TNT. Three days later the United States dropped a second atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, with the energy equivalent of close to 22 kilotons of TNT.

A more effective method, known as implosion, is used in a spherically shaped weapon. The outer part of the sphere consists of a layer of closely fitted and specially shaped devices, called lenses, consisting of high explosive and designed to concentrate the blast toward the center of the bomb. Each part of the high explosive is equipped with a detonator, and is wired to all other parts. An electrical impulse explodes all the chunks of high explosive all at the same time. At the core is a sphere of fissile material, which is compressed by the powerful, inwardly directed pressure, or implosion. The density of the metal is increased, and a supercritical assembly is produced. The Alamogordo test bomb, as well as the one dropped by the U.S. on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, were of the implosion type. Each was equivalent to about 20 kilotons of TNT.

Hermonuclear, or Fusion, Weapons

Even before the first atomic bomb was developed, scientists realized that a type of nuclear reaction different from the fission process was theoretically possible as a source of nuclear energy. Instead of using the energy released as a result of a chain reaction in fissile material, nuclear weapons could use the energy released in the fusion of light elements. This process is the opposite of fission, since it involves the fusing together of the nuclei of isotopes of light atoms such as hydrogen. It is for this reason that the weapons based on nuclear-fusion reactions are often called hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs.

Thermonuclear Tests

November 1, 1952, there was a test with a fusion-type device called Mike, which was part of Operation Ivy. It produced an explosion with power equivalent to several million tons of TNT. The Soviet Union detonated a thermonuclear weapon in the megaton range in August 1953. On March 1, 1954, the U.S. exploded a fusion bomb with a power of 15 megatons. It created a glowing fireball, more than 4.8 km in diameter, and a huge mushroom cloud (1).

The March 1954 explosion led to worldwide identification of the nature of radioactive fallout (2). The fallout of radioactive debris from the huge bomb cloud also revealed much about the nature of the thermonuclear bomb. Had the bomb been a weapon consisting of an A-bomb trigger and a core of hydrogen isotopes, the only persistent radioactivity from the explosion would have been the result of the fission debris from the trigger and from the radioactivity induced by neutrons in coral and seawater. Some of the radioactive debris, however, fell on the Lucky Dragon, a Japanese vessel engaged in tuna fishing about 160 km from the test site. Japanese scientists later analyzed this radioactive dust. The results demonst