5 ms·

Cleansing thermonuclear fire

68 points by danso 8y ago

labster 8y ago
TL;DR: the atmosphere will never ignite in nuclear fire, but if you add enough deuterium to the oceans you can get runaway fusion in the oceans with an absurdly large nuke.
- ianai 8y ago
  How far from realistic is the amount needed?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    > a 20 million megaton bomb (which is to say, a bomb with the yield equivalent to 200 teratons of TNT, or a bomb 2 million times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba’s full yield). If we assumed that such a weapon had even a fantastically efficient yield-to-weight ratio like 50 kt/kg, that’s still a device that would weigh around a billion metric tons
    - whydead 8y ago
      Why is helpful troll's comment dead? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012339
      - kristianp 8y ago
        From their messages, that account doesn't seem to be abusive, so it may be some kind of error?
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        I've saved those two comments, because I found them to productive to this discussion. I see that their first comment contains "ethnic slur" (though not an ethnic slur), so that might be what caused the mistake?
  - wtracy 8y ago
    Twenty times the total amount of deuterium currently present in the world's oceans. Basically, you'd have to completely change the chemistry of the oceans on a global scale. Also, AFAIK there is no realistic way to synthesize deuterium artificially (please let me know if I'm wrong!) so to get started you'd need to go out and find something like an order of magnitude more deuterium than exists on planet Earth. You'd have to scour a big chunk of the solar system. So, not something an apocalyptic cult is going to pull off in the forseable future.
    - helpfulTroll 8y ago
      You'd have to scour a big chunk of the solar system. No, bombarding regular water with neutrons from fission reactions will produce heavy water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production
      - wtracy 8y ago
        I stand corrected.
    - yborg 8y ago
      If you have that kind of tech, much simpler to just alter the orbit of a 10-15 km wide asteroid and drop that on the planet.
    - killjoywashere 8y ago
      > you'd have to completely change the chemistry of the oceans on a global scale We're working on it... Not with this particular additive, but we're definitely doing that, so it's possible.
  - helpfulTroll 8y ago
    Well, based on another comment in this thread [0], after the ocean's concentration of nuclear fuel is covered, maybe about 2 million Tsar Bomba's would do the trick. The physical dimensions of the Tsar Bomba are on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba If 2 million are needed, then that's 100 cubed, twice. So two cubes of this bomb, with each cube measuring 100 units per edge, filled solid. The bomb is already designed, so producing 2 million of them would be a matter of setting up an assembly line, and churnning them out like automobiles, once the raw materials are procured. Each one is about the size of a car, so a parking garage that holds 2 million cars is an okay frame of reference. Most stadiums have parking lots that hold 10,000 spaces, so 100 stadiums, across one hundred cities, but all together in one place. Realistically, though, two million cars easily fit inside any large city. As for the gaseous concentration of fusion gas in the ocean, that's a much tougher problem to tackle. Really, because the huge fusion bombs that use deuterium (and tritium) are sourcing that material from the oceans (or other bodies of water). Culling deuterium from natural water sources is among the easier ways to produce weaponizable amounts of the gas. So, in order to create twenty times the natural standing concentration would require synthesizing your own new, man-made deuterium from the normal variety of hydrogen, by irradiating non-heavy water. For every million gallons of ocean water, you can pull out maybe 156 gallons of heavy water, so you'd get about six hundred trillion gallons of heavy water, if you could capture all of the natural heavy water in the world. Take 600 trillion gallons, and multiply it by twenty. Bingo, you're there. That's the ignitable concentration, if you had 2 million Tsar Bombas. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18011959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18011959
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      I have a hunch - mathematically unverified - that yield wouldn't increase linearly with volume. And you might have to build your stadiums underwater, because a surface explosion would be unlikely to create the energy density. Also, it's not obvious there's enough uranium in the world for that many fission devices. If you want to kill everyone with nuclear weapons, there are easier ways to do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb This wouldn't scour all life from the earth, but enthusiastic use of cobalt salt weapons would probably put life back to the plant and mutant insect stage.
yesenadam 8y ago
From Hamming's paper Mathematics on a Distant Planet (1998): ...before going farther I need to mention a few things in my life that have shaped my opinions. The first occurred at Los Alamos during WWII when we were designing atomic bombs. Shortly before the first field test (you realize that no small scale experiment can be done - either you have a critical mass or you do not), a man asked me to check some arithmetic he had done, and I agreed, thinking to fob it off on some subordinate. When I asked what it was, he said, "It is the probability that the test bomb will ignite the whole atmosphere." I decided I would check it myself! The next day when he came for the answers I remarked to him, "The arithmetic was apparently correct but I do not know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen-after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels." He replied, like a physicist talking to a mathematician, that he wanted me to check the arithmetic not the physics, and left. I said to myself, "What have you done, Hamming, you are involved in risking all of life that is known in the Universe, and you do not know much of an essential part?" I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, "Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you." Yes, we risked all the life we knew of in the known universe on some mathematics. Mathematics is not merely an idle art form, it is an essential part of our society. http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.2307/2589247&downloadname=&key=3WSYZDNDCNT7FUD3 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.2307/2589247&download...
- mirimir 8y ago
  Maybe Hamming didn't "know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen". But "after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels" seems like a valid point. However, perhaps "knowing" physics includes coming up with likely values for currently unmeasurable parameters. > I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, "Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you." Right. If there was any blaming to be done, nobody left alive would know what Hamming's role had been.
  - enkid 8y ago
    I think that last part is a joke.
maxander 8y ago
> The answer they found: if the Earth’s oceans had twenty times more deuterium than they actually contain, they could be ignited by a 20 million megaton bomb (which is to say, a bomb with the yield equivalent to 200 teratons of TNT, or a bomb 2 million times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba’s full yield). A factor of twenty in the elemental composition of hydrogen, and a factor of a million in the fission efficiency of uranium. We’ve been lucky with regard to untested physical constants so far, but there’s no promise that that will hold going forward!
- p1mrx 8y ago
  That reminds me of Three Worlds Collide, chapter 5: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worlds-collide-0-8 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worl... Humans are comparing notes with a new alien species, and find a huge discrepancy in one of the physical constants. It turns out that scientists had published a fake value, because the information would've allowed anyone to build a superweapon.
yosefzeev 8y ago
A Greater Hand than math was involved.
nine_k 8y ago
It's worth noting that the makers of Tsar Bomba [1] also considered the possibilities of igniting the atmosphere, though it had "mere" 50 Mt of yield. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
grkvlt 8y ago
Initially I assumed this was going to be about how nuclear tests were 'self-declassifying' since all the bomb components, test fixtures and equipment, the tower it was mounted on etc. would be completely vaporized in the explosion, so there was nothing left to classify as secret. Except for that one embarassing time when the UCRL device in test Upshot-Knothole Ruth[0] fizzled and failed to destroy the steel tower it was detonated on... 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Upshot%E2%80%93Knothole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Upshot%E2%80%93Knoth...

68 points by danso 8y ago

TL;DR: the atmosphere will never ignite in nuclear fire, but if you add enough deuterium to the oceans you can get runaway fusion in the oceans with an absurdly large nuke.

ianai 8y ago
How far from realistic is the amount needed?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- roywiggins 8y ago
  > a 20 million megaton bomb (which is to say, a bomb with the yield equivalent to 200 teratons of TNT, or a bomb 2 million times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba’s full yield). If we assumed that such a weapon had even a fantastically efficient yield-to-weight ratio like 50 kt/kg, that’s still a device that would weigh around a billion metric tons
  - whydead 8y ago
    Why is helpful troll's comment dead? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012339
    - kristianp 8y ago
      From their messages, that account doesn't seem to be abusive, so it may be some kind of error?
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      I've saved those two comments, because I found them to productive to this discussion. I see that their first comment contains "ethnic slur" (though not an ethnic slur), so that might be what caused the mistake?
- wtracy 8y ago
  Twenty times the total amount of deuterium currently present in the world's oceans. Basically, you'd have to completely change the chemistry of the oceans on a global scale. Also, AFAIK there is no realistic way to synthesize deuterium artificially (please let me know if I'm wrong!) so to get started you'd need to go out and find something like an order of magnitude more deuterium than exists on planet Earth. You'd have to scour a big chunk of the solar system. So, not something an apocalyptic cult is going to pull off in the forseable future.
  - helpfulTroll 8y ago
    You'd have to scour a big chunk of the solar system. No, bombarding regular water with neutrons from fission reactions will produce heavy water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Production
    - wtracy 8y ago
      I stand corrected.
  - yborg 8y ago
    If you have that kind of tech, much simpler to just alter the orbit of a 10-15 km wide asteroid and drop that on the planet.
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    > you'd have to completely change the chemistry of the oceans on a global scale We're working on it... Not with this particular additive, but we're definitely doing that, so it's possible.
- helpfulTroll 8y ago
  Well, based on another comment in this thread [0], after the ocean's concentration of nuclear fuel is covered, maybe about 2 million Tsar Bomba's would do the trick. The physical dimensions of the Tsar Bomba are on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba If 2 million are needed, then that's 100 cubed, twice. So two cubes of this bomb, with each cube measuring 100 units per edge, filled solid. The bomb is already designed, so producing 2 million of them would be a matter of setting up an assembly line, and churnning them out like automobiles, once the raw materials are procured. Each one is about the size of a car, so a parking garage that holds 2 million cars is an okay frame of reference. Most stadiums have parking lots that hold 10,000 spaces, so 100 stadiums, across one hundred cities, but all together in one place. Realistically, though, two million cars easily fit inside any large city. As for the gaseous concentration of fusion gas in the ocean, that's a much tougher problem to tackle. Really, because the huge fusion bombs that use deuterium (and tritium) are sourcing that material from the oceans (or other bodies of water). Culling deuterium from natural water sources is among the easier ways to produce weaponizable amounts of the gas. So, in order to create twenty times the natural standing concentration would require synthesizing your own new, man-made deuterium from the normal variety of hydrogen, by irradiating non-heavy water. For every million gallons of ocean water, you can pull out maybe 156 gallons of heavy water, so you'd get about six hundred trillion gallons of heavy water, if you could capture all of the natural heavy water in the world. Take 600 trillion gallons, and multiply it by twenty. Bingo, you're there. That's the ignitable concentration, if you had 2 million Tsar Bombas. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18011959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18011959
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    I have a hunch - mathematically unverified - that yield wouldn't increase linearly with volume. And you might have to build your stadiums underwater, because a surface explosion would be unlikely to create the energy density. Also, it's not obvious there's enough uranium in the world for that many fission devices. If you want to kill everyone with nuclear weapons, there are easier ways to do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb This wouldn't scour all life from the earth, but enthusiastic use of cobalt salt weapons would probably put life back to the plant and mutant insect stage.

yesenadam 8y ago

From Hamming's paper Mathematics on a Distant Planet (1998): ...before going farther I need to mention a few things in my life that have shaped my opinions. The first occurred at Los Alamos during WWII when we were designing atomic bombs. Shortly before the first field test (you realize that no small scale experiment can be done - either you have a critical mass or you do not), a man asked me to check some arithmetic he had done, and I agreed, thinking to fob it off on some subordinate. When I asked what it was, he said, "It is the probability that the test bomb will ignite the whole atmosphere." I decided I would check it myself! The next day when he came for the answers I remarked to him, "The arithmetic was apparently correct but I do not know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen-after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels." He replied, like a physicist talking to a mathematician, that he wanted me to check the arithmetic not the physics, and left. I said to myself, "What have you done, Hamming, you are involved in risking all of life that is known in the Universe, and you do not know much of an essential part?" I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, "Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you." Yes, we risked all the life we knew of in the known universe on some mathematics. Mathematics is not merely an idle art form, it is an essential part of our society. http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.2307/2589247&downloadname=&key=3WSYZDNDCNT7FUD3 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.2307/2589247&download...

mirimir 8y ago
Maybe Hamming didn't "know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen". But "after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels" seems like a valid point. However, perhaps "knowing" physics includes coming up with likely values for currently unmeasurable parameters. > I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, "Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you." Right. If there was any blaming to be done, nobody left alive would know what Hamming's role had been.
- enkid 8y ago
  I think that last part is a joke.

maxander 8y ago

> The answer they found: if the Earth’s oceans had twenty times more deuterium than they actually contain, they could be ignited by a 20 million megaton bomb (which is to say, a bomb with the yield equivalent to 200 teratons of TNT, or a bomb 2 million times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba’s full yield). A factor of twenty in the elemental composition of hydrogen, and a factor of a million in the fission efficiency of uranium. We’ve been lucky with regard to untested physical constants so far, but there’s no promise that that will hold going forward!

p1mrx 8y ago
That reminds me of Three Worlds Collide, chapter 5: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worlds-collide-0-8 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worl... Humans are comparing notes with a new alien species, and find a huge discrepancy in one of the physical constants. It turns out that scientists had published a fake value, because the information would've allowed anyone to build a superweapon.

yosefzeev 8y ago

A Greater Hand than math was involved.

nine_k 8y ago

It's worth noting that the makers of Tsar Bomba [1] also considered the possibilities of igniting the atmosphere, though it had "mere" 50 Mt of yield. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

grkvlt 8y ago

Initially I assumed this was going to be about how nuclear tests were 'self-declassifying' since all the bomb components, test fixtures and equipment, the tower it was mounted on etc. would be completely vaporized in the explosion, so there was nothing left to classify as secret. Except for that one embarassing time when the UCRL device in test Upshot-Knothole Ruth[0] fizzled and failed to destroy the steel tower it was detonated on... 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Upshot%E2%80%93Knothole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Upshot%E2%80%93Knoth...