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This is hard to compute. The 22 kiloton MK-III Fatman had 6.2 kilograms but of this only a little over 700 grams fissioned. For 1 kiloton you would need roughly 33 grams to fission. But how much more you would need to get the bomb to work reliably depends on too many tricky design details (most classified) to tell. Assuming the same material efficiency as the MK-III, a total of roughly 282 grams would be needed. However this amount is so far below criticality that a superefficient implosion assembly system would be required as well as gas boosting to get that small a yield.

I would guess, without access to classified information, that a basic pure fission 1 kiloton bomb would need between 2.5 kilogram to 5 kilogram of plutonium to fission the roughly 33 grams needed for that yield.

Material efficiency becomes real bad below about about 10 kilotons unless gas boosting is used. Even the MK-IIIs material efficiency of about 10% is low by today's standards, but the figure is still a good starting point, especially as it is not classified.

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The smallest possible size for a nuclear bomb is typically around 1 kiloton, which is equivalent to the explosive power of 1,000 tons of TNT.


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There are 1,000 kilograms in a kiloton. A kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 metric tons.


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A Kiloton of TNT is not really a measure of weight but of explosive force. A kiloton of TNT would would weigh 1000 metric tons or about 2.2 Million pounds. But a kiloton of water, feathers, bricks.. would also weigh 2.2 Million pounds. A kiloton of TNT has the energy of 4.2 × 1012 joules or 4 Billion BTU's which would be enough energy to raise the temperature of 2 Million tons of Water 1 degree F.


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1 Kiloton would be 1000 metric tons or 1000 x 32150746 troy oz or 32150746000 troy oz. If gold traded at $1300 per oz total value of 1 Kiloton of Gold would be 41.796 TRILLION dollars or about 2.45 times the total US National Debt.


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