3 ms·

I don't know that much about the physics of neutrino radiation, or the fine details of bomb design. I do have a hard time believing that such a beam can dump en

by ufmace 6y ago

I don't know that much about the physics of neutrino radiation, or the fine details of bomb design. I do have a hard time believing that such a beam can dump enough neutron radiation into a subcritical bomb core to trigger a meltdown or fizzle detonation without also giving a dangerous exposure to any human who is in the way of that beam. I'm also suspicious of the difficult of aiming a beam that's a meter wide at the target distance to hit a nuclear warhead core reliably halfway across the world. If you miss, how do you tell what direction you missed in and correct?

maxander 6y ago
I could imagine a wider “targeting” beam, fired so that a satellite overhead of the target site could catch neutrino scatter from the warhead. I don’t know what ridiculous engineering would be required to get sufficient neutrino collection for that to work, on a satellite, but if the budget covered a 50GW neutrino beam it might stretch to that, too.
cowboysauce 6y ago
>I do have a hard time believing that such a beam can dump enough neutron radiation into a subcritical bomb core to trigger a meltdown or fizzle detonation without also giving a dangerous exposure to any human who is in the way of that beam. Particle beams act in surprising ways. For example, proton beams are used to treat tumors because they end up dumping most of their energy in a small volume when fired into matter. This allows you to do things like delivering very high doses of radiation into a brain tumor while the tissue along the path of the beam receives a very low dose. This occurs because at high enough energies, the protons are essentially traveling fast enough that they don't have time to really interact with anything in their way. But as they lose energy they begin to interact more, which causes them to lose more energy, making them interact even more, etc. The difference is that protons are charged particles while neutrinos are not, but I don't find it surprising that a neutrino beam would act in a similar fashion.

by ufmace 6y ago

maxander 6y ago

I could imagine a wider “targeting” beam, fired so that a satellite overhead of the target site could catch neutrino scatter from the warhead. I don’t know what ridiculous engineering would be required to get sufficient neutrino collection for that to work, on a satellite, but if the budget covered a 50GW neutrino beam it might stretch to that, too.

cowboysauce 6y ago

>I do have a hard time believing that such a beam can dump enough neutron radiation into a subcritical bomb core to trigger a meltdown or fizzle detonation without also giving a dangerous exposure to any human who is in the way of that beam. Particle beams act in surprising ways. For example, proton beams are used to treat tumors because they end up dumping most of their energy in a small volume when fired into matter. This allows you to do things like delivering very high doses of radiation into a brain tumor while the tissue along the path of the beam receives a very low dose. This occurs because at high enough energies, the protons are essentially traveling fast enough that they don't have time to really interact with anything in their way. But as they lose energy they begin to interact more, which causes them to lose more energy, making them interact even more, etc. The difference is that protons are charged particles while neutrinos are not, but I don't find it surprising that a neutrino beam would act in a similar fashion.