2 ms·
Engineering and Design of Nuclear Weapons
- azalemeth 5y agoOne of the more chilling things on this fascinating website is the following quote, that I was previously unaware of: > Interestingly enough, the United States government conducted a controlled experiment called the Nth Country Experiment to see how much effort was actually required to develop a viable fission weapon design starting from nothing. In this experiment, which ended on 10 April 1967, three newly graduated physics students were given the task of developing a detailed weapon design using only public domain information. The project reached a successful conclusion, that is, they did develop a viable design (detailed in the classified report UCRL-50248) after expending only three man-years of effort over two and a half calendar years. In the years since, much more information has entered the public domain so that the level of effort required has obviously dropped further. I am a medical physicist; detailed nuclear properties and information about both radiation and exactly the sort of systematic and comprehensive materials-science engineering detailed in this document are my day-to-day bread and butter. I have directly used software and information from places like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge in the context of radiochemistry, or understanding the natural abundance biodistribution of certain isotopes. Yet I've always found these horrible, technological weapons (linked above) deeply fascinating -- much like how I can appreciate the beauty, maneuverability and sheer engineering prowess of supersonic fighter jets whilst disliking their basic purpose. I'd never encountered this site before -- it's very detailed, a lovely example of 1990s web design, and as far as I can tell, the physics is completely correct.