Nuclear Weapons

Lieutenant Colonel Horton presents the case study of the South African nuclear program, and specifically their decision to "roll back" nuclear production and abandon "the bomb." In this era of greatly heightened proliferation concerns, this is a particularly illustrative case. It highlights the distinctly national factors, founded around the regional security perceptions and more global recognition goals of the core national leadership, that led to the South African reversal of its nuclear proliferation. United States personnel dealing with counterproliferation policy and programs, and with their implementation, can gain valuable insight from examining this first successful case of nuclear rollback.

Oak Ridge was responsible for Uranium enrichment (oralloy) and small scale Plutonium production reactor (X-10) prototype development.

Hanford was responsible for operation of Plutonium production reactors (B-reactor, etc.) and fuel pellet reprocessing to extract Plutonium.

No.

The most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated was the Russian "Tsar Bomba" in 1961. (50 Megatons) It had a yield of 100 megatons of TNT, but was reduced to avoid fallout. People 100 km away would have gotten third degree burns from the heat of the explosion.

Two.

There were no nuclear weapons in WW1. The nuclear bomb was not invented until WW2.

20 Billion. That's including silos and other facility's to maintain an launch the bomb.

With the exception of nations that are being reviewed by intell sources; all of the countries that had them during the cold war still have them. The only difference now is their intent. That has changed from hostile to non-hostile (end of cold war). Also what has changed are some of the delivery systems...many of those were destroyed by treaty.

Eight countries, Russia & US, each of which currently has a little over 5000 active weapons and parts from a similar number dismantled under treaty agreements; the other six countries none have more than a couple hundred active weapons. I do not have exact counts for any of the eight. Weapons yields are also unknown, and they can be more important than counts.

I could calculate the dimensions of the various parts needed from data in unclassified nuclear engineering books I have, write a hydrodynamics simulation on my laptop, and a neutron diffusion simulation on my laptop and almost certainly design one with better yield and efficiency than the WW2 bombs. However the next step of getting real materials is much harder unless you have the assets of a country.

Atomic bombs have not been used in warfare since 1945. Nations have an arms control agreement called the Non-Proliferation Treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and most countries have committed to not use atomic bombs. However, some countries still possess these weapons as a deterrent.

I suspect that the answer is something along the lines of: "It is not the policy of Her Majesty's Military to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons at or on any of her stations or ships." It would be a violation of the Secrets Act to share such knowledge.

North Korea

The first nuclear explosion in history took place in New Mexico, at the Alamogordo Test Range, on the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) desert, in the test named Trinity.

It began when the first nuclear device was dropped on 06 August 1945.

Actually before the end of July 1945, when Beria and Stalin reviewed the material from spies in the Manhattan Project of the results of the July 16, 1945 Trinity test.

New Mexico were the first experiment (no one was hurt) and then came Hiroshima in japan and then came Nagasaki in japan (hundreds of thousands were killed in an instant in these blasts).

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Actually it was discovered following the New Mexico test (called Trinity) that several families lived and farmed in side canyons in the high fallout zone of the test. Prior to the test nobody knew these people lived there, so they were not evacuated before the test (as had been other families known to be living in the area). These people and their cattle received significant burns from beta radiation emitted by the fallout particles and lost hair in the burned areas. Some of their sheep became unable to eat because of these burns on their mouths and had to be euthanized to save them from suffering further. These people most definitely were hurt by the test!

Luckily we haven't had to have a war to find out. These things are very much state secrets, anyone who is in a position to know would not be allowed to tell you!

1945 bombs droped on japan

1949 Russia created a nuclear bomb

1957brittan got a nuke

The ONLY nuclear device(s) ever used in a world war was the Hiroshima & Nagasaki atomic bombs that were dropped in August of 1945, ending WWII. Nuclear powered naval ships were used in a number of other conflicts, but not nuclear weapons.

Russia

Nuclear weapons WERE the cold war. No Nukes, No Cold War.

Of course.

The dangers of nuclear energy revolve primarily around three factors: the production of the nuclear fuel, operation of the nuclear power plant, and disposal of radioactive wastes.

Producing the nuclear fuel in the first place is by far the largest danger, from both a probability standpoint and the potential environmental impact. Mining uranium ore (via large open-pit mines) is quite messy, with serious risks to miners from radon gas and inhalation of (slightly) radioactive dust. It has all the bad environmental impacts of other open-pit mines (such as copper mines). Even more dangerous, is the processing/refining of the uranium ore into fuel rods. This is a very toxic, expensive, and complex process, one that can easily result in considerable environmental contamination if proper disposal of the toxic by-products isn't done. Additionally, use of a fuel-production facility to produce weapons-grade fuel is simple, and a considerable political problem.

Operation of a Western-style nuclear power plant is exceedingly safe, especially the newest designs, which are designed as "fail-off"; that is, such plants automatically (and irreversibly) turn off if anything at all goes wrong. Such plants are designed with a huge number of redundant subsystems and containment vessels. This is not to say that they aren't vulnerable to attack (whether intentional by outsiders, or by unintentional major mistakes by operators), nor that they can withstand all possible threats. However, the track record of the world-wide nuclear industry in terms of number of people actually harmed by any failure of a nuclear power plant is outstanding, and is so far below that of any other industry it is ludicrous. More importantly, the worst-case scenarios for a nuclear power plant are extremely unlikely, and the actual impact of any reasonably likely scenario is easily (though not cheaply) contained. Overall, the environmental and human danger of a nuclear power plant, taking into account the possible failure scenarios and the likelihood of such scenarios, is far less than ANY other current power generation technology, including such "green" technologies as wind, solar, wave, and geothermal.

Disposal of radioactive waste is mainly a political issue, not a technical one. Current technology to properly dispose of the three main types of radioactive waste is both well-tested, and reliable, if not cheap, though less expensive than disposal methods for other dangerous materials, such a toxic chemicals. Low-level waste (primarily, ordinary objects contaminated with radioactivity, not actually radioactive themselves) is simple and safe: burial in a well-lined landfill. High-level waste which is highly radioactive has a very short half-life (days or weeks), so the proper method is sequestering in a sealed, shielded facility for a decade or so, then "normal" disposal. High-level waste which has a long half-life (low radioactivity, high toxicity) requires permanent sequestering with proper precautions against water leakage, but does not otherwise present major technical challenges or dangers. The danger of nuclear waste disposal is entirely a human-created problem: we have viable (and safe) solutions that are not excessively dangerous, but there are significant political barriers to implementing such solutions. Those barriers are based almost exclusively on fear-mongering and a misunderstanding of the nature of the wastes and the risks involved in the various disposal methods.

Including the entire nuclear power cycle, nuclear power is far less dangerous to the environment than any fossil fuel; to be equivalent to the danger posed by burning fossil fuels, the world would have to experience a Chernobyl-style massive accident on a yearly basis. When compared to hydro-electric power, the environmental impact is about the same, while the threat to human life is much less for nuclear power. Geothermal is significantly more safe in all terms. The relative dangers to human life for wind, solar, and wave power production are noticeably less than for nuclear power, but the direct environmental dangers presented by wind/solar/wave are about the same (or slightly less) than nuclear power.

Cold war means a military stand-off. Fighting with nuclear weapons generally insured that such a war could only result in "mutually assured destruction" to both combatants. Consequently, we tried to have the best weapon in case we had to use it. We believed that the side that struck first might have the best chance of surviving; we called, "first strike capability."

The immediate effect was that Japan sued for peace. There is a movement underway to condemn the Americans (even in their own country) for the use of the nuclear weapon. Given the situation at the time, a new untried weapon would have been justified. There was no possible way to know what the consequences of nuclear weapons would be. Now, over 60 years later, nuclear energy has a history. Then, in World War 2, it was new, untried, and very likely could have failed. Sadly, war is just that...WAR. The objective is to win the war with as little human loss as possible. When new technology is developed, no one knows what the consequences will be in the future.