What's the biggest nuke possible to be built today???

[Braznor]

The Tsar Bomba exploded back in 1961 had a potential yield of 100 Megatons. But to prevent fallout, the designers used a lead temper instead of an uranium one in its second stage, reducing the final yield to 50 Mts.

The initial three stage design was capable of approximately 100 Mt (Megatons), but at a cost of too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage, and possibly the second stage, had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction). This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from fusion alone (as such, it was one of the "cleanest" nuclear bombs ever created, generating a very low amount of fallout relative to its yield).

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I wonder how powerful modern nukes can be if we want them so without the need to host it on a delivery system? Perhaps half a dozen stages or more? Perhaps several gigatons in yield?

 

[IronWing]

There is no theoretical limit on the size of a thermonuclear weapon. Just keep making it longer.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: ironwing
There is no theoretical limit on the size of a thermonuclear weapon. Just keep making it longer.

So what is the non-theoretical limit?

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: Aflac

Originally posted by: ironwing
There is no theoretical limit on the size of a thermonuclear weapon. Just keep making it longer.

So what is the non-theoretical limit?

Money and desire, same as for most things.

 

[Leros]

Originally posted by: ironwing
There is no theoretical limit on the size of a thermonuclear weapon. Just keep making it longer.

Is there a decaying relationship between damage and materials?

Say we had a weapon capable of destroying 1/100 of the Earth. Would you need a weapon 100 times as large to destroy all of Earth, or would you need something much much larger?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Tsar Bomba was actually past the theoretical useful limit as a weapon.

 

[miketheidiot]

probably pretty fucking huge.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

50 kilos of matter and the same amount of its anti matter should do the trick in destroying the earth

good luck with that though

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Tsar Bomba was actually past the theoretical useful limit as a weapon.

explain

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Tsar Bomba was actually past the theoretical useful limit as a weapon.

explain

I imagine beyond a certain level of destruction all you're doing is turning rubble in to dust.

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
probably pretty fucking huge.

:thumbsup:

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Tsar Bomba was actually past the theoretical useful limit as a weapon.

explain

The weight and size of the Tsar Bomba limited the range and speed of the specially modified bomber carrying it and ruled out its delivery by an ICBM (although on December 24, 1962, a 50 Mt ICBM warhead developed by Chelyabinsk-70 was detonated at 24.2 megatons to reduce fallout).[8] In terms of physical destructiveness, much of its high yield was inefficiently radiated upwards into space. It has been estimated that detonating the original 100 Mt design would have released fallout amounting to about 25 percent of all fallout emitted since the invention of nuclear weapons.[9] Hence, the Tsar Bomba was an impractically powerful weapon. The Soviets decided that such a test blast would create too great a risk of nuclear fallout and a near certainty that the release plane would be unable to reach safety before detonation.[10]

...the advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 meters or better made such a design philosophy obsolete. Subsequent nuclear weapon design in the 1960s and 1970s focused primarily on increased accuracy, miniaturization, and safety. The standard practice for many years has been to employ multiple smaller warheads (MIRVs) to "carpet" an area. This is believed to result in greater ground damage.

Thus, it's better to zerg rush with smaller nukes than to drop a heavy.

 

[Foxery]

Probably large enough that you don't dare test it if you want to keep living on this planet. Today's Fusion-based technology makes the ones we dropped on Japan look like firecrackers.

 

[Braznor]

If there is no need to transport the weapon i.e blowing it up where it was built, how big could it be?

Remember, there is no need to deliver it by ICBM or aircraft or anything at all.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: Braznor
If there is no need to transport the weapon i.e blowing it up where it was built, how big could it be?

Remember, there is no need to deliver it by ICBM or aircraft or anything at all.

I imagine your gains get smaller as you add more material as the detonation source is still the same and everything has to radiate from there.

 

[Modeps]

1.21 jiggatons.

 

[Modelworks]

Look at some astronomy sites that show exploding stars.
Thats the maximum

Average supernova explosion = 10 billion billion billion megatons , or 10^27 megatons


If we wanted to we could build a device so large that it would literally split the earth.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Tsar Bomba was actually past the theoretical useful limit as a weapon.

explain

The weight and size of the Tsar Bomba limited the range and speed of the specially modified bomber carrying it and ruled out its delivery by an ICBM (although on December 24, 1962, a 50 Mt ICBM warhead developed by Chelyabinsk-70 was detonated at 24.2 megatons to reduce fallout).[8] In terms of physical destructiveness, much of its high yield was inefficiently radiated upwards into space. It has been estimated that detonating the original 100 Mt design would have released fallout amounting to about 25 percent of all fallout emitted since the invention of nuclear weapons.[9] Hence, the Tsar Bomba was an impractically powerful weapon. The Soviets decided that such a test blast would create too great a risk of nuclear fallout and a near certainty that the release plane would be unable to reach safety before detonation.[10]

...the advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 meters or better made such a design philosophy obsolete. Subsequent nuclear weapon design in the 1960s and 1970s focused primarily on increased accuracy, miniaturization, and safety. The standard practice for many years has been to employ multiple smaller warheads (MIRVs) to "carpet" an area. This is believed to result in greater ground damage.

Thus, it's better to zerg rush with smaller nukes than to drop a heavy.

Yup. Much of the energy released dissipates upward. This becomes more evident with the larger bombs. Since most of the destruction is in the shockwave outside of the initial blast zone a lot of this is lost. Ultimately it is just easier to use a couple smaller ones for the same effect.

This also gets into the stacking theory (detonate one weapon and then another above it seconds later that forces ALL of the energy down and out (at least form the first and some from the second).

 

[meltdown75]

42 megajoules

 

[Rubycon]

Just keep it under 88mph to prevent seeing serious shit. :laugh:

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[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Look at some astronomy sites that show exploding stars.
Thats the maximum

Average supernova explosion = 10 billion billion billion megatons , or 10^27 megatons


If we wanted to we could build a device so large that it would literally split the earth.

Cue the white robots from Krikkit.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Look at some astronomy sites that show exploding stars.
Thats the maximum

Average supernova explosion = 10 billion billion billion megatons , or 10^27 megatons


If we wanted to we could build a device so large that it would literally split the earth.

I don't think we could. Easiest physics law to use to explain why I disagree is conservation of momentum. Simply not enough mass above the nuclear device, and we can't dig a hole deep enough. We can make some pretty big potholes though.

 

[Feldenak]

Big enough to suck the paint off your house and give your family a permanent orange afro.

 

[takeru]

hmm... how about if tsar bomba was dropped on top of a large dormant volcano? or a fault line?

 

[LordMorpheus]

Watch Sunshine. They build a really freaking big bomb in that movie ... two of these bombs consumed basically all of the accessible nuclear material found on earth.