4 ms·
Rephrasing the question for amusement: how many kilotons of TNT would it take to compress a gram of plutonium to criticality?
by klyrs 2y ago
Rephrasing the question for amusement: how many kilotons of TNT would it take to compress a gram of plutonium to criticality?
- lazide 2y agoA good xkcd question! My guess would be so much that the actual criticality event would be caused by the gram of plutonium smashing into the surface of the resulting TNT neutron star at some high fraction of c. Edit: found this nice write up on Wikipedia [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamper_(nuclear_weapon)#CITEREFReed2011 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamper_(nuclear_weapon)#CITE...] which refers to some papers/books which appear to show that theoretically, with the right reflector/tamper, up to an 8 fold reduction in critical mass is possible. Which would, I guess, make Plutonium’s critical mass (uncompressed) go from 11kg to 1.375 kg. Throw in the neutron amplification effects of beryllium with high radiation exposure, hyper compression using some of the new super-high-detonation velocity chemical explosives, and I’d bet there are production nukes out there with sub-kg plutonium pits. Cool beans. Probably still in the 900g range though.
- euroderf 2y agoYield in kT ?