4 ms·

There are actually many peaceful uses of nuclear weapons, both the US and the Soviets experimented with using them to dig big holes, and the Soviets also used t

by Crito 13y ago

There are actually many peaceful uses of nuclear weapons, both the US and the Soviets experimented with using them to dig big holes, and the Soviets also used them for geographic surveys (like that "thumper" at the beginning of Jurassic Park, but much bigger ;)) and a few other things. Unfortunately all of these uses are politically untenable. It would be great to use them in space though; it would probably be much easier to convince the public to go for that.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Getting them up there is the risk - a launch failure means raining radioactive death at random.
- Crito 13y ago
  It would be bad, but it wouldn't really be that bad. A launch failure would not cause a complete detonation (that is trivial to prevent, but difficult to orchestrate). A fizzle could be mitigated fairly easily as well, possibly even by putting the warhead on a launch escape system if you really wanted to go overboard. The most likely failure is just the device coming apart and being scattered, but in that situation Pu-239 is not particularly more concerning than Pu-238. More or less just an alpha emitter; not good to ingest, but otherwise pretty safe. We've launched plenty of things with Pu-238 in board.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Not talking tiny reactors here; talking tons of the stuff.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Not really - bomb design has come a long way in the last ~70 years - modern bomb designs are very resilient to damage and very unlikely to detonate accidentally. And if that isn't good enough then take the parts to orbit separately and assemble in orbit. We've had thousands of H-bombs on top of rockets for decades and a number of live fire tests where bombs delivered by missile detonated and so far there have been no accidental detonations.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Nothing survives uncontrolled reentry. It isn't detonation that's at issue; its melted bomb parts falling like rain across large swaths of a continent.

by Crito 13y ago

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

Getting them up there is the risk - a launch failure means raining radioactive death at random.

Crito 13y ago
It would be bad, but it wouldn't really be that bad. A launch failure would not cause a complete detonation (that is trivial to prevent, but difficult to orchestrate). A fizzle could be mitigated fairly easily as well, possibly even by putting the warhead on a launch escape system if you really wanted to go overboard. The most likely failure is just the device coming apart and being scattered, but in that situation Pu-239 is not particularly more concerning than Pu-238. More or less just an alpha emitter; not good to ingest, but otherwise pretty safe. We've launched plenty of things with Pu-238 in board.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Not talking tiny reactors here; talking tons of the stuff.
arethuza 13y ago
Not really - bomb design has come a long way in the last ~70 years - modern bomb designs are very resilient to damage and very unlikely to detonate accidentally. And if that isn't good enough then take the parts to orbit separately and assemble in orbit. We've had thousands of H-bombs on top of rockets for decades and a number of live fire tests where bombs delivered by missile detonated and so far there have been no accidental detonations.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Nothing survives uncontrolled reentry. It isn't detonation that's at issue; its melted bomb parts falling like rain across large swaths of a continent.