[AR] Re: Damascus AR Incident
- From: James Padfield <james.padfield@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2017 11:08:10 +0100
My point I think is still valid - that full yield detonation requires
*both* dets to fire simultaneously, and within (probably) microseconds
More like nanoseconds. Shock wave travels in HE at say 6km/s or 6cm in 1
microsecond. You need the ~6cm pit to be squozen evenly, if one side is
being squoshed 6cm out ..
Actually in a high-performance HE, with 90+ % HMX, shockwave velcoity
is going to be approaching 9 km/s, but now I am digressing too ;-)
I'd guess the shocks should arrive within a good bit less than a mm of each
other - so <15 nS detonation accuracy.
(actually less, but that's another story)
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...
From slightly unreliable memory, there were about 25 US "one-point-safe"
tests, where (speaking loosely) one det was set off just to see what would
happen. About 10 had nuclear yields in the 1-10 ton range, 5 or 6 resulted
in significant nuclear yield, in the 100 tons range, with one result about
500 tons.
Interesting. I was simplifying things a bit - yes you are right, it
would produce a small scale nuclear yield - I think I was thinking
that in terms of a nuclear weapon, a yield of 10 tons is "merely"
scattering plutonium everywhere. But no an explosion of the order of
tons of TNT equivalent is a bad thing to happen, notwithstanding the
plutonium (and other nasty materials such as berrylium) that would be
thrown all over the place.
But for other people's bombs, who knows how one-point-safe they are?
I can't comment on anyone else's bombs, but the (relatively)
insensitive PBXs (polymer bonded explosives) in use in the main
charges of modern US and UK weapons are pretty safe - the response to
fire or impact/intrusion is generally burning violently, but not by
transitioning to detonation as old melt-cast TNT-based charges were
prone to doing. The dets contain no primary explosives, so even in a
fire, the PETN in a EBW is unlikely to burn to detonation. I don't
know about the level of confinement in a nuclear warhead, but I would
imagine it is fairly light, compared to (say) a Mk82 aircraft bomb or
a 155mm artillery round, which of course has a heavy steel case for
fragmentation.
Anyways, we are getting way OT here...!
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