Symposium on Engineering with Nuclear Explosives, January 14-16, 1970, Las Vegas, Nevada

Symposium on Engineering with Nuclear Explosives, January 14-16, 1970, Las Vegas, Nevada PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nuclear engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 878

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Book Description
Sponsored by the American Nuclear Society in cooperation with United States Atomic Energy Commission.

Symposium on Engineering with Nuclear Explosives, January 14-16, 1970, Las Vegas, Nevada

Symposium on Engineering with Nuclear Explosives, January 14-16, 1970, Las Vegas, Nevada PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nuclear engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 878

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sponsored by the American Nuclear Society in cooperation with United States Atomic Energy Commission.

Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons

Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309096731
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Underground facilities are used extensively by many nations to conceal and protect strategic military functions and weapons' stockpiles. Because of their depth and hardened status, however, many of these strategic hard and deeply buried targets could only be put at risk by conventional or nuclear earth penetrating weapons (EPW). Recently, an engineering feasibility study, the robust nuclear earth penetrator program, was started by DOE and DOD to determine if a more effective EPW could be designed using major components of existing nuclear weapons. This activity has created some controversy about, among other things, the level of collateral damage that would ensue if such a weapon were used. To help clarify this issue, the Congress, in P.L. 107-314, directed the Secretary of Defense to request from the NRC a study of the anticipated health and environmental effects of nuclear earth-penetrators and other weapons and the effect of both conventional and nuclear weapons against the storage of biological and chemical weapons. This report provides the results of those analyses. Based on detailed numerical calculations, the report presents a series of findings comparing the effectiveness and expected collateral damage of nuclear EPW and surface nuclear weapons under a variety of conditions.

Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials

Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309181216
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
In this study, CISAC tackles the technical dimensions of a longstanding controversy: To what extent could existing and plausibly attainable measures for transparency and monitoring make possible the verification of all nuclear weaponsâ€"strategic and nonstrategic, deployed and nondeployedâ€"plus the nuclear-explosive components and materials that are their essential ingredients? The committee's assessment of the technical and organizational possibilities suggests a more optimistic conclusion than most of those concerned with these issues might have expected.

Nuclear Weapons Technology 101 for Policy Wonks

Nuclear Weapons Technology 101 for Policy Wonks PDF Author: Bruce Goodwin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781952565113
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The making of policy for nuclear security requires a strong grasp of the associated technical matters. That grasp came naturally in the early decades of the nuclear era, when scientists and engineers were deeply engaged in policymaking. In more recent decades, the technical community has played a narrower role, one generally limited to implementing policies made by others. This narrower role has been accentuated by generational change in the technical community, as the scientists and engineers who conceived, built, and executed the programs that created the existing U.S. nuclear deterrent faded into history along with the long-term competition for technical improvements with the Soviet Union. There is thus today a clear need to impart to the new generation of nuclear policy experts the necessary technical context.That is the purpose of this paper. Specifically: to introduce a new generation of nuclear policy experts to the technical perspectives of a nuclear weapon designer, to explain the science and engineering of nuclear weapons for the policy generalist, to review the evolution of the U.S. approach to nuclear weapons design, to explain the main attributes of the existing U.S. nuclear stockpile, to explain the functions of the nuclear weapons complex, and how this all is integrated to sustain deterrence into the future.

Project Plowshare

Project Plowshare PDF Author: Scott Kaufman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801465834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" speech, scientists at the Atomic Energy Commission and the University of California's Radiation Laboratory began in 1957 a program they called Plowshare. Joined by like-minded government officials, scientists, and business leaders, champions of "peaceful nuclear explosions" maintained that they could create new elements and isotopes for general use, build storage facilities for water or fuel, mine ores, increase oil and natural gas production, generate heat for power production, and construct roads, harbors, and canals. By harnessing the power of the atom for nonmilitary purposes, Plowshare backers expected to protect American security, defend U.S. legitimacy and prestige, and ensure access to energy resources. Scott Kaufman's extensive research in nearly two dozen archives in three nations shows how science, politics, and environmentalism converged to shape the lasting conflict over the use of nuclear technology. Indeed, despite technological and strategic promise, Plowshare's early champions soon found themselves facing a vocal and powerful coalition of federal and state officials, scientists, industrialists, environmentalists, and average citizens. Skeptical politicians, domestic and international pressure to stop nuclear testing, and a lack of government funding severely restricted the program. By the mid-1970s, Plowshare was, in the words of one government official, "dead as a doornail." However, the thought of using the atom for peaceful purposes remains alive.

Physics of Nuclear Explosives

Physics of Nuclear Explosives PDF Author: Dalton BARROSO
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
This book (an improved English version of the one published in Portuguese in 2009) deals with topics essential to understanding the physics of nuclear explosives. Prepared based on strictly academic scientific activity, it is intended for those who wish to know more deeply the theory and physical processes involved in nuclear explosions. The main topics covered are: neutronic and criticality (neutron transport); hydrodynamics and thermodynamics at high temperatures and densities; dense and heavy plasmas; opacity and transport of thermal radiation; hydrodynamic theory of chemical detonations; shock waves, dynamic compression of solids, implosions; statistics of fission chain reactions; and inertial confinement fusion (thermonuclear detonations). Three types of explosives are analyzed: Pure fission explosives, the so-called "boosted bombs" (with the introduction of deuterium-tritium into the fissile mass) and thermonuclear explosives. Results of complex numerical and computational simulations (many of which presumably have never been published in the open scientific literature) are presented and discussed.""The Physics of Nuclear Explosives" provides a rather comprehensive account of the physical principles involved in nuclear detonations, including both fission and fusion weapons. The author has broken new ground in presenting the results of his numerical simulations of nuclear detonations and characterizations of particular weapons, such as the W-87 warhead." Steven Aftergood - Federation of American Scientists

Ejecta Studies

Ejecta Studies PDF Author: W. A. Roberts
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nuclear excavation
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
This project included 146 ejecta measurement stations encircling ground zero at eight radial distances ranging from 373 to 1,707 meters. The twenty-four sampling lines were spaced at fifteen-degree intervals. Data presented were recovered from stations located at radial dis tances of 640, 853, 1,067, 1,280, and 1,707 meters. An attempt will be made to recover data at stations located closer to ground zero at a later time. Preliminary analysis of ejecta data indicates that a real density varies inversely as distance raised to the 3.64 power. Circumfer ential variation of areal density is about a factor of 30 at the 1,707 meter radial distance, a factor of 10 at the 1,280 meter radial dis tance, and a factor of 7 at the 853 meter radial distance. (Author).

Seeking the Bomb

Seeking the Bomb PDF Author: Vipin Narang
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691172625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.

Stalin and the Bomb

Stalin and the Bomb PDF Author: David Holloway
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300164459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Book Description
The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.

Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions

Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions PDF Author: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nuclear energy
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description