3 ms·

It's not clear why they are aiming at exploding the nuclear bombs instead of simply degrading them. If you induce enough plutonium nuclei to split, the core won

It's not clear why they are aiming at exploding the nuclear bombs instead of simply degrading them. If you induce enough plutonium nuclei to split, the core won't reach criticality when the implosion happens, so no mushroom cloud. To do that, you can point a lower intensity neutrino beam for years at a nuke or a group of nukes. The adversary won't even know the nukes are compromised.

tandr 6y ago
So it accelerates the decay of Pu or U-xxx inside the bomb. But this process is heat- and radiation-emitting, so I suspect if stockpile is monitored for either of these (probably both), something will be detected.
- credit_guy 6y ago
  You are correct. I thought the heat would be negligible, but it's not. A modern plutonium pit is about 3kg [1]. If you want to induce a 5% decay, that's 150g. Each gram is equivalent with about 3 tons of coal [2] , so that's about 450 tons. If you do that over a period of 1 year, that's still about 1 ton of coal per day. That won't go unnoticed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon) [2] https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html
  - MertsA 6y ago
    >That won't go unnoticed. Given the size of the pit that would probably literally melt the pit right out of the warhead.
    - titzer 6y ago
      Which would pretty much be mission accomplished. Cleaning up a spill of pure plutonium would be an extremely lengthy process, months or maybe even years. It would contaminate the entire room/building/ship.
      - gpm 6y ago
        Unless they noticed before it melted out, and launched the thing...
        nordsieck 6y ago
        > Unless they noticed before it melted out, and launched the thing... 1. They'd know who to launch it at 2. You can't just launch 1 nuke - it's all or nothing. And for the most part, it's probably nothing: countries besides the US and Russia just don't have very deep nuclear stockpiles[1]. ___ 1. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohasw...
        rbanffy 6y ago
        > 1. They'd know who to launch it at Not really. "If we detect such an attack, we'll launch against you both. Make sure nobody on your side develops such a weapon". It's called "MAD" for a reason.

tandr 6y ago

So it accelerates the decay of Pu or U-xxx inside the bomb. But this process is heat- and radiation-emitting, so I suspect if stockpile is monitored for either of these (probably both), something will be detected.

credit_guy 6y ago
You are correct. I thought the heat would be negligible, but it's not. A modern plutonium pit is about 3kg [1]. If you want to induce a 5% decay, that's 150g. Each gram is equivalent with about 3 tons of coal [2] , so that's about 450 tons. If you do that over a period of 1 year, that's still about 1 ton of coal per day. That won't go unnoticed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon) [2] https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html https://www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html
- MertsA 6y ago
  >That won't go unnoticed. Given the size of the pit that would probably literally melt the pit right out of the warhead.
  - titzer 6y ago
    Which would pretty much be mission accomplished. Cleaning up a spill of pure plutonium would be an extremely lengthy process, months or maybe even years. It would contaminate the entire room/building/ship.
    - gpm 6y ago
      Unless they noticed before it melted out, and launched the thing...
      - nordsieck 6y ago
        > Unless they noticed before it melted out, and launched the thing... 1. They'd know who to launch it at 2. You can't just launch 1 nuke - it's all or nothing. And for the most part, it's probably nothing: countries besides the US and Russia just don't have very deep nuclear stockpiles[1]. ___ 1. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohasw...
        rbanffy 6y ago
        > 1. They'd know who to launch it at Not really. "If we detect such an attack, we'll launch against you both. Make sure nobody on your side develops such a weapon". It's called "MAD" for a reason.