As I understand it, and to be fair I'm no expert, depending on the design
of and materials in the 'physics package' of a two-point linear implosion
device the detonation of one point will never produce a full yield but may
produce a sub-kiloton yield involving some fission. That may not sound like
a lot but it still means that in an accident with one of those devices
where one of the detonators goes off (which is entirely plausible) the
device could still produce the equivalent energy of hundreds of tons of HE,
which is going to be a big deal if it's near a populated area never mind
the scattered radioactive materials, burst of radiation and dangerous
fission products that come along with that.
And along the line of scattered fissionable materials that's also a
realistic and noteworthy hazard of nuclear weapons. Again I'm no expert but
from what I've read even highly enriched uranium doesn't pose much of a
radiation risk as its half-life is so long but an accident that scatters
plutonium around could pose a serious risk to anyone in the area and can be
extremely hard to clean up.
On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 12:13 AM, James Padfield <james.padfield@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
simultaneous detonators......but then there are the 'linear implosion' devices that use only two
since Swan in 1956 (Redwing Inca). That became W-45.
Not much of a secret that nearly everything has used only two points
I wasn't going to say that, but as you already have, and if it is "not
much of a secret"...
My point I think is still valid - that full yield detonation requires
*both* dets to fire simultaneously, and within (probably) microseconds
of each other (which is why EBW dets were developed for nukes -
conventional dets just aren't fast enough to detonate within the
required microsecond tolerances). Anything less than simultaneous
firing of the two dets "merely" scatters plutonium everywhere. At
least, that is my understanding...
