What Are Nuclesr Weapons Essay Research Paper

What Are Nuclesr Weapons Essay, Research Paper

What are Nuclear Weapons.

What exactly are nuclear weapons. How do they work. Who thought up the concept of nuclear weapons. When have they been used. Why have they been used. Most people don t know the answers to all these questions, but would really like to understand the reasons behind nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are small reliable ways to cause mass destruction. Being that the explosion of the weapons is in a large part due to very small elements such as uranium and plutonium the weapons can be very small and still cause damage on a large scale. When a bomb explodes part of the mass that the elements contains is converted into energy and if this happens quickly enough there will be a nuclear explosion (Campbell 10). Nuclear weapons have been used to end wars and have since then caused a large amount of mistrust between countries.

The idea for using nuclear weapons came about in the August of 1940. The potential of these weapons was discovered by several scientists in a laboratory called the Virus House located in Berlin, Germany (Campbell 36). Nuclear weapons were starting to be developed in 1943 by Americans and Europeans. These studies were done under the supervision of Robert Oppenheimer. By the summer of 1944 Oppenheimer s team had developed a device 10 feet long and weighing 9,000 pounds that could be dropped from a plane. In this 9,000 pound destruction device , only a few pounds of either uranium or plutonium could cause a blast that had never been seen before. This weapon had the force of 20,000 tons of TNT and could cause major damage over thousands of square miles (Macksey 174).

The testing of nuclear weapons has taken place at numerous locations. Sometimes bombs have been dropped that had little or no explosion and others have exploded with great force. The first successful explosion of an atomic bomb was on July16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In the 1950 s nuclear weapons called H – Bombs were beginning to be tested that had a far greater effect than that of the atomic bombs. The largest nuclear weapon to ever be tested was dropped by the Soviet Union in 1962. This weapon exploded with the force of 3,000 Hiroshima bombs (Campbell 10). Nuclear weapons that have been tested since then have mostly been smaller bombs dropped mainly to improve accuracy and delivery (Campbell 11).

Fission V fusion V fission bombs are weapons that have three stages. The first stage is called the trigger . During the trigger stage the trigger of the weapon creates a tremendous amount of energy that is delivered to the fission material almost as fast as the speed of light. Next is the H V Bomb stage. During the H V Bomb stage hydrogen atoms and other elements are compressed together causing a nuclear reaction. This happens very quickly also but not quite as fast as the trigger. The final stage of fission V fusion V fission bombs is the impact of the weapon hitting the target. During the impact, all of the weapons energy is released. Due to the three stages of the fission V fusion V fission bombs they have a very problematic production and aren t very reliable (Funk and Wagnalls 263).

H V bombs are very powerful weapons that can be used to cause many times the destruction of and atomic bomb. On average, about 50 percent of the power of an H-bomb results from thermonuclear-fusion reactions and the other 50 percent from fission that occurs in the A-bomb trigger and in the uranium jacket. A clean H-bomb is defined as one in which a significantly smaller proportion than 50 percent of the energy arises from fission (Encarta 99). A clean H-bomb is determined as one in which a considerably smaller proportion than 50 percent of the energy arises from fission. Possibly as little as 5 percent of the total explosive force might result from fission – the weapon would therefore be 95 percent clean.

The neutron bomb is a nuclear weapon that does not release as many long-lasting radioactive fission components into the ecosystem far away from the point of the initial explosion. However, the large number of neutrons released in thermonuclear reactions is known to bring about radioactivity in materials, especially earth and water, within a relatively small area around the explosion. Thus the neutron bomb is considered a tactical weapon because it can do serious damage on the battlefield without producing the radioactive fallout that endangers people or structures miles away (Funk and Wagnalls 267).

The immediate effects of all nuclear weapons are the blast, heat, and finally radiation. These immediate effects are determined by what kind of surface the weapons are dropped on. An explosion that happens in the air or water doesn t have nearly the same effect as one that happens on the ground (Philips).

The blast of an explosion is nearly one half of the weapon s total energy. The blast is determined by the height of the explosion. The winds created by the blast travel at several hundred miles per hour. In a one megaton air burst (one million tons of TNT), which has a blast 300 meters high, the lethal distance of the blast is 5 kilometers in diameter (Campbell 11). The blast of an explosion causes most initial damage by knocking over buildings or any other structure with ease. The height of a blast can reach 600 meters, which could greatly increase the diameter of it (Funk and Wagnal