what exactly is a nuclear weapon?

Question

what are the dangers

Answer 1

First let me mention how nuclear weapons work. Just hang on... it's relevant!

It all starts with uranium. Uranium, as we all know, as radioactive. It breaks down into other stuff over millions of years. Think of it kind of like a piece of paper. If you leave a piece of paper alone long enough, it slowly burns in the air over decades - that's why old books have yellow pages... the paper is partly burnt!

Scientists discovered that (also like a piece of paper) there was a way to get that reaction to go all at once. And by compressing the energy released over millions of years into a fraction of a second, you get a very, very big explosion (just like setting fire to a piece of paper will consume it in moments instead of decades!).

To get the uranium to do this, they need to cause a chain reaction, so the energy released keeps the reaction going instead of just fizzling off somewhere else. And they do this first of all by getting it very, very pure and packing it into a small space. Curiously enough, you have to force it into a space smaller than the metal wants to occupy.

So even though the amount of uranium used for a nuclear bomb is usually no larger than a baseball, bombs have to be much larger than that. The core is surrounded by more conventional explosives. These are of the highest caliber to they deliver the exact amount of force on all sides - by pushing everywhere at once with immense, they can crush the metal sphere down to a fraction of its volume. This, of course, also requires the highest caliber of timing circuitry to trigger all the explosives at the exact same time, exactly measured lengths of wire, and so on.

So you can see the two really tough parts about making a nuclear weapon: you have to get really, really pure uranium (they use centrifuges usually, which you probably hear about in recent news about Iran) and you also have to construct immensely accurate timing devices. Since uranium is actually a very common element, governments keep track of who's building bombs and how many by looking for purification equipment and certain precise parts used in the timing.

In spite of all this equipment, though, a fission bomb like I've described above could probably fit in the trunk of a car. With the right kind of shielding, the radiation from the core would be very difficult to detect. And the explosive force would be immense - the equivalent of thousands and thousands of TONs of TNT. So this is one of the biggest dangers... a bomb could be fairly easy to hide and it could be almost anywhere. It's easy to make a missile powerful enough to lob them all over the place, and it's probably best not to think too much about what a terrorist could do with one.

Their weakness lies precisely in that precision. Many bombs are sensitive to temperature and pressure changes (though it's easy to make a missile to carry a bomb, it's much harder to make a bomb that does well on a missile). Some are, of course, much larger and easier to find. And many of the steps in uranium purification have quite poisonous and toxic missteps, so it's pretty easy to get all your engineers killed with a small mistake in manufacture, not to mention all the radiation that will be zinging around even if you do everything exactly right.

And there are variations that can be done too. If radioactive plutonium is added to the uranium mix, you get a bomb that produces much more radiation when it explodes. When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down, it polluted much of Europe with radioactive particles carried by the wind... it wouldn't be too hard to do the same kind of thing with a plutonium bomb. There are also slightly different construction techniques.

And even the force of a fission bomb is small compared to a fusion bomb (also called H-bombs... fission ones are sometimes called A-bombs). A fusion bomb will take the force from the fission explosion and funnel it into a small pellet of hydrogen gas. Using all that force to compress it with unimaginable pressure and temperature causes it to fuse into helium which can provide several times the yield of a fission bomb. But constructing something that can funnel such massive force is an even greater engineering challenge. H-bombs thus are like a (comparatively) weak nuclear bomb wrapped around a strong one.

Precise requirements for all these things explain why certain things can go wrong. If you shoot down a nuclear missile or the timing is off on the fission part, you just get the explosion of the conventional explosives. You'll get a bang and spread unpleasant radioactive stuff around, but you won't level a city. If the fission part works but the fusion part is off, you'll get a typical fission explosion, which is certainly enough to cause massive damage. If everything works on an H-bomb, you get a signature double-flash (separated by milliseconds), and you've probably started WW3.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

When uranium and plutonium isotopes are bombarded with neutrons, the release of energy is monumental, The ground zero will vaporize all matter, particularly human within a radius of 10-15 miles depending on the kiloton yield. The release of radiation will poison your system and impacts a radius of 30-50 miles or more depending on wind direction and/or obstacles. The major danger is global nuclear winter, the dust that will block the sunlight for at least 2 years or more, killing all plant and animal life.

The roaches and other lower forms of life will inherit the earth...which is why a full scale nuclear exchange is global suicide.

Answer 3

A nuclear weapon is a weapon which derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions of fission or fusion. As a result, even a nuclear weapon with a relatively small yield is significantly more powerful than the largest conventional explosives, and a single weapon is capable of destroying an entire city.

Answer 4

Mm, it's just some uranium/plutonium in a shell with explosives, which is driven together to start an uncontrollable chain reaction by the explosion of the explosives.

As for the dangers, there's the initial blast, radiation in the form of pure radiation and radioactive dust displaced by the blast, there's the EMP and well, that's it.

Radiation affects people not even close to the blast, sometimes killing them in radiation sickness (your hair and skin basically falls off) or sometimes transferring symptoms down to the next generation which will have deformed babies.

Answer 5

Nuclear weapons use the power of a nuclear reaction. This creates enormous amounts of energy. Most of the energy is released in the form of an explosion.

Answer 6

An uncontrolled, fissioned supply of radioactive source material capable of chain reaction. The dangers are the huge energy given off for the size of mass and the inherent biological hazzards of radioactive source material suitable for fission - namely Uranium 235 or Plutonium.

Answer 7

well if you are in a target area you will be vaporized in a Milli second. If you are far away you will be exposed to radiation and die of cancer, any offspring will have birth defects. Then there is allways nuclear winter, where are of the debris blocks out the sun and the planet dies.

Answer 8

A nuck is any wepon that has a nucular yeald. And the dangers are crispy critters and fallout that kills slow

Answer 9

Armageddon.

Answer 10

Well, it's the ultimate problem solver.