Are vacuum tubes susceptable to EMP in the way that integrated circuits are?

Question

So in the case of a nuclear blast, radio stations (which use vucuum tubes), and old fashion radios, wouldn't necessarily be knocked out, as long as the power to run them was still present?

Answer 1

A component's ability to withstand EMP is proprotional to it's operating power. Normal tubes found in radio receivers operate in the Joules/second regime, while commercial transmitting tubes operate well above 10 kiloJoules per second.

The amount of energy from a high altitude EMP at 150,000 km away *might* reach a fraction of a Joule, but at a short pulse width so the power level (for a very short period of time), might be in the milli-Watt to Watt region. This is not enough, in general, to harm receiving tubes -- certainly not transmitting tubes.

Tubes are not susceptible to EMP the same way ICs are susceptible.

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Answer 2

No, vaccum tubes operate at higher voltages than solid state devices and therefore would not be as suseptable to EMP unless the pulse was large enough.

Answer 3

I believe it would be worse. VTs have internal metal parts. EMP is an electromagnetic pulse and I believe it would wreak havoc on the metal parts of the VT.