US cancels 'mini-nukes' programme

No, as I said initially, they aren’t as good as they thought..

Sure they are. Just not in YOUR opinion because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Small nuclear explosions are more threat to humans than physical targets. ..

Really? You might take another look at what was left of Hiroshima after they dropped the bomb.

A nuclear weapon consists of very fragile components that while they might resist a high g launch from an artillery piece are not that good at resisting impacts against solid granite. ..

Talk about your howlers. “While it can survive upwards of 20,000Gs it is very fragile.”

And under mountains of solid granite is a common place for the targets they are after to be placed..

Sandia labs tested the concept back in the 80s by firing RVs into granite mountains in preperation for a penetrating RV for the Pershing 2. And Mach 8 is a HELL of a lot more taxing than a drop from a bomber. But I’m sure you’re much smarter than them or else the test results MUST have been falsified right?

During the cold war the only interest in small nukes other than as portable weapons for spec ops was in enhanced radiation weapons or because the diameter of the shell wasn’t large enough for anything more powerful…

Wrong again. The W33 had a 40kt yeild (about three Hiroshimas) and it was in an 8″ diameter artillery shell.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Mk33.jpg

The W48 had a 72 ton yield in a 6″ artillery shell and before you say “well that’s hardly enough to bother with” it’s about 150 times the boom power of a 5000lb GBU-28 which has less than a thousand pounds of explosives in it.

Unless you can bury the charge inside the target before it explodes then you need a very powerful charge. The fragility of nuke warheads means that burying it deeply isn’t very likely. …

According to Garry’s laws of physics huh? According to the laws the rest of us use the only way you’d get more stress than an artillery shell is if you decelerated in less distance than the length of the barrel. But then since we’re talking about a bomb dropped from an aircraft it wouldn’t even have to be that. (Bomb impact velocity is far less than the muzzle velocity of a shell).

Small nukes put out pretty much similar practical radiation to big nukes. In fact in practical terms they actually are more of a problem as there are fission and fusion weapons… fission is Uraniaium and Plutonium, while Fusion is hyrdogen. …

Where to start. Thermonuclear weapons don’t fuse hydrogen they fuse lithium6. And thermonuclear weapons use tampers made of guess what- uranium. And there isn’t a fusion weapon on the planet that doesn’t have a fission trigger. In fact the majority of your small bombs are simply the triggers of the larger ones or variants of them.

Fission is dirty and causes a lot of radiation. In much larger weapons the fireball can be larger than the dangerous (note the dangerous radiation radius is much larger than the lethal radiation radius) radiation radius. In effect to get enough radiation to kill you you have to be inside the fireball and would be killed by that anyway….

You’ll want to explain that to all the people who died from radiation exposure from open air testing in Nevada and the two drops in Japan. They didn’t die from prompt radiation but they DID die from the radiation. Actually some did die in Japan from a lethal dose of radiation after they’d survived the fireball. Some in hours, some days, some weeks.

Even worse this weapon had to be a ground burst so the amount of irradiated vapourised material would be large.

Actually the theory was to explode it UNDER ground not ON the ground but they’d have been lucky to contain it in dirt, let alone reinforced concrete or rock. (The GBU-28 is good for about 120feet in dirt.)

But as I have said penetrating granite is a bit like penetrating steel armour. 400m of steel armour can’t be penetrated by small nukes.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much ignorance in two sentences before.

1. Granite is NOT like “steel armor”. If it was they’d be using granite for tanks not tank armor.

2. What in God’s name makes you think they’d need to penetrate through 400 meters of ANYTHING? The idea is to couple the shock to the ground vs letting it disipate in the air. Do some research (there’s that dreaded word) on underground and underwater testing and you’ll see why that notion seems so assinine.

The dangerous radiation level is by no means proportional to the warhead’s yield.

There is a relationship between the distance the radiation travels and the power of the weapon but it is not 1:1. When you double the size of the weapon you certainly don’t double the radiation radius. Off the top of my head I remember reading that with a 1KT bomb the radius of lethal levels of gamma radiation is about 500m or so. With a 10KT bomb it is about 600m and with a 20MT bomb it is about 1km or 1,000m. Obviously with a 20MT bomb the fireball would exceed the radius of the lethal gamma radiation. They pointed out that with enhanced radiation weapons ( neutron bombs) compared to a 10KT bomb, the neutron bomb has the explosive effect of a 1KT bomb, but whereas a 10KT bomb would kill enemy troops under cover or armour out to half a kilometre, the Neutron bomb would kill them out to 2.5km due to the extra radiation it emitted.

“We elminated the threat of nuclear radiated victimes because all people will instantly get grilled!”
That is progress! But to be honest, your post is very good and gives good explanation on nuclear warheades. The dangerous radiation level is by no means proportional to the warhead’s yield.

Actually they would have been very effective- at killing the target.

No, as I said initially, they aren’t as good as they thought.
Small nuclear explosions are more threat to humans than physical targets. A nuclear weapon consists of very fragile components that while they might resist a high g launch from an artillery piece are not that good at resisting impacts against solid granite. And under mountains of solid granite is a common place for the targets they are after to be placed. During the cold war the only interest in small nukes other than as portable weapons for spec ops was in enhanced radiation weapons or because the diameter of the shell wasn’t large enough for anything more powerful.
Unless you can bury the charge inside the target before it explodes then you need a very powerful charge. The fragility of nuke warheads means that burying it deeply isn’t very likely. Small nukes put out pretty much similar practical radiation to big nukes. In fact in practical terms they actually are more of a problem as there are fission and fusion weapons… fission is Uraniaium and Plutonium, while Fusion is hyrdogen. These days you need either one or both in that to get fusion you need fission but not vice versa, so if it is a small weapon it makes sense to just use fission. Fission is dirty and causes a lot of radiation. In much larger weapons the fireball can be larger than the dangerous (note the dangerous radiation radius is much larger than the lethal radiation radius) radiation radius. In effect to get enough radiation to kill you you have to be inside the fireball and would be killed by that anyway.

Even worse this weapon had to be a ground burst so the amount of irradiated vapourised material would be large.

But as I have said penetrating granite is a bit like penetrating steel armour. 400m of steel armour can’t be penetrated by small nukes.

Is it known if the cancelation is more a political issue or a technical?

As the ‘sferrin’ stated the international blame when using the nuke would be ten times higher than the spreaded radiation. I think the US can live without bunker busting nukes. Il Kim should sleep well. Someday his final hour will come …

Problem is of course these lasers are enormous and require huge amounts of energy… not likely to get that in an aircraft or satellite sized package any time soon.

The main reason these bunker busters have been dropped was probably because they weren’t as effective as they had hoped…

Actually they would have been very effective- at killing the target. The chances of them getting one in the ground without any radiation getting out though would be about zero not to mention that even if none got out once the world got word that we’d used a nuke it wouldn’t matter if it had patched the hole in the ozone when it went off they’d freak. They’ve got a 30-40 thousand pound penetrating bomb in the works (at least they had one in the works- don’t know if it got cancelled) and if that’s not enough that could always put a booster on it to get it up to speed. They’ve still got options they could try out before they’d have no choice but to go with a nuke. Still though I wish they’d at least do the necessary research to develope “micro-nukes”.

The main reason these bunker busters have been dropped was probably because they weren’t as effective as they had hoped…

could be…or enough has been learned that it can be listed as an “option” in the future. We really don’t know which is which do we? :confused:

Mentally Il Kim can sleep easy now.

Generating Fusion Reaction by using Laser , instead by conventional atomic one should be looked into.

Problem is of course these lasers are enormous and require huge amounts of energy… not likely to get that in an aircraft or satellite sized package any time soon.

The main reason these bunker busters have been dropped was probably because they weren’t as effective as they had hoped…

Mini Nukes are good for very Deep Underground Bunkers , Generating Fusion Reaction by using Laser , instead by conventional atomic one should be looked into.

Clean Nukes Are Not Far Off Now ………. 😀