[pale horse]

Someone please give me low down on depleted uranium. Its thrown around, but I would like to understand why it is used in/with tank ammo and other ammo. Thanks

[pangris]

D.U. is VERY heavy. Mass X Velocity = how well you'll knock things down, over, or punch through them, so the heavier the material, the better. It is also used in some 30mm guns, such as the A-10's nosegun. Goes through armor more readily than most other metals.

[Mike Irwin]

Along with being very heavy (and dense), DU has a couple of other properties that make it a great penetrator...

First, it won't shatter. If you get a steel penetrator, or even tungsten carbide penetrator, moving as fast as a DU penetrator, it most likely will shatter and simply fail to penetrate.

Another property that I didn't know about DU is that when it hits something and begins to penetrate it apparently won't go blunt like steel or tungsten carbide as it passes through the armor.

[SelfProclaimedExpert]

Uranium is both denser then lead and fairly hard. Depleted uranium doesn't irradiate very much compared with the good stuff. All else, same as above.

[Zak Smith]

One successful strategy for penetrating armor is to use something with a high sectional density going very fast. This means you want to use a long, thin rod of some very dense and strong material. Typical penetrator rods might have a length to diameter ratio of 20:1 or more.

Since it is impossible to spin-stabilize a "bullet" that is 20 times longer than it is wide, these are "fin-stabilized discarding sabot" rounds. The bore is perhaps 120mm across, but most of that area is taken up by the sabot which encases the thin (5-8mm diameter) penetrator rods. The sabot and penetrator is shot from a smooth bore canon, and the fins provide aerodynamic stabilization.

Search on google for "APFSDS" and you'll find lots of information.

-z

[Navy joe]

Additionally it is "pyrophoric" I believe the correct term is, under the ridiculous pressures generated by impact at that speed it is self igniting.

[critter]

'Depleted' Uranium comes from the process of enrichment of uranium to be used in reactors as fuel or in other 'chain reaction' type environments. Naturally occuring uranium is probably less than .5% U-235 isotope and most of the rest is the U-238 isotope. The 235 type is used as reactor fuel but the % of that isotope must be increased a great deal to be useful. The complex process produces large quantities of the 238 type (useless as fission fuel) but with the properties discussed above. In addition to the above properties, both types are radioactive. The 'depleted', being mostly the U-238 isotope, is radioactive but has a very long half-life, meaning that it lasts a very long time but its radioactivity is very, very low.

Even the low radioactivity may, however, may be dangerous when the stuff is vaporized and the particles inhaled. This MAY be some of the problems some small numbers of our troups have experienced when inhaling dust from vaporized rounds as they impact hardened armour at very high speeds.

[Mike Irwin]

I can't find the specifications on the actual dart, but I'm pretty certain that the penetrator is actually closer to 30 to 40 mm in diameter, but I'm certain it's heavier than 5 to 8mm...

[pale horse]

Sooooo this means I cant get some for reloading?;) Cant you just see it

230 gr. du sbkwrkr (superbuttkickinwererabbitkillinround) 100.00 per round.



I guess a dense metal would be good for various applications such as Cats.

Thank you gents for the informaion.

[.45FMJoe]

Mass X Velocity = how well you'll knock things down, over, or punch through them, so the heavier the material, the better.

Ó*F=ma. The velocity doesn't affect the "knock down"power. Acceleration does. True a faster moving projectile stopped in the same distance as a slower one will produce more force, but it's the acceleration that counts.

*edit: It's supposed to be the greek symbol Sigma but it's showing up differently on my screen.

[Sean Smith]

For the curious...

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/library/randrep/du/index.html

Bottom line is, the sniveling about DU's health effects is exaggerated to the point of pure fiction... aside from getting hit by a chunk going 5,000 feet per second, of course. ;)

[telomerase]

U238 does fission, it just has to get really hot. Half or more of the energy from a standard "fusion" bomb comes from the jacket of "depleted" uranium that surrounds the core (which consists of a Pu fission bomb and lithium deuteride fusion fuel).

So how many tons of this stuff have we shipped to Serbia, Iraq, etc.? Of course, according to Elliot Roosevelt "we" shipped a few kg of U235 directly to the Soviets at the end of WWII, but that was to pay them to conquer Manchuria and transfer the 200,000 tons of US arms that were shipped to Vladivostok in 1944 to Mao. So there's really no point to worrying about unintended consequences of US policy, since the intended consequences are bad enough...

Did anyone see the 1999 paper from UTD on fissioning hafnium with X-rays? It's just possible that we don't know everything about physics yet, and "depleted" uranium may be a common nuclear fuel in a few years. (Give some Srpske bomb orphans metal detectors and pay 'em a dollar a kg... it's a great speculation :) ).

[Frohickey]

For penetration, you want it denser, as well as smaller in contact area. That way, the pressure on the material is greater. Another reason why rifle rounds go through kevlar.

U-238, or depleted uranium, is a neutron absorber, which means you end up fizzling your chain reaction.

Plutonium is fissile. You can make Plutonium out of U-238, but you'd need to separate the plutonium from the U-238. Thats what is currently happening in North Korea. They are purifying their nuclear materials to separate out the plutonium from the U-238.

[Gary H]

The environuts think that the word, "radioactive" will kill you. If this stuff causes health problems, it might just be due to the fact that it is a heavy metal and not that it is radioactive.

[hso]

Note the last section

Jane's Defense http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jdw/jdw010108_1_n.shtml
08 January 2001

DEPLETED URANIUM - FAQs

What is Depleted Uranium?
Depleted Uranium (DU) is only used as a penetrator. It is not a warhead, bomb or explosive.

For what is Depleted Uranium used on the battlefield?
It is used to penetrate the armour of modern, the residual penetrator (and the high temperature fragments created as it passes through the armour) striking everything inside the tank and setting fire to its fuel and ammunition. In the Balkans, this would include the M84A (Russian T-72) main battle tanks of the Bosnian Serb VRS and the Serbian VJ forces. In the Gulf war, some of the Iraqi tanks were of the same T-72 type, manned by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards.

Who used it in the Balkans?
During the Balkans operations from 1992 to 1996, only the US Air Force acknowledges its use in some of its 30mm cannon shells fired from the GAU-8A cannon. It is true that some guided weapons used depleted uranium to increase the penetration effect and that the 20mm Phalanx close-in weapon system, used to protect warships at sea from sea-skimming missiles, also has a percentage of DU rounds.

What about the British Army?
The British Army fired 88 DU rounds against Iraqi tanks in the Gulf war; no such rounds were fired during the Bosnian and Kosovan campaigns. No British aircraft are equipped with DU warheads on their weapons, according to official reports. DU rounds are ‘war-use only’.

Any other uses?
DU is very dense so is also used as a counter-balance for large commercial aircraft including the Boeing 747, military aircraft such as the Harrier, and in yacht keels.

Also, on 14th March 1988 the US Department of Defence announced that a new, modified version of their Abrams main battle tank was due to enter production which would have improved armour containing DU. First production M1A1s with the new armour were completed in 1988. These tanks, which were shipped to US units in Germany, weighed about 65 tons. The heavy armour package deployed in Europe includes DU in the turret.

The armour design modification to the M1A1 incorporates steel-encased depleted uranium which is two and a half times the density of steel and is already used in a broad spectrum of civilian applications. Sealed within the tank, depleted uranium has a very low level of natural radiation which is within the acceptable range established by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Currently, versions of the M1A2 tank also contain DU armour.

Can Depleted Uranium be replaced?
DU can be replaced (Britain, France, Russia and the US are the only commonly acknowledged users of DU as the penetrator material in kinetic energy munitions). The great majority of armies use kinetic energy munitions with tungsten alloy penetrators; however, these have a 20% lower penetrative performance, and the sintered materials used to make them are more expensive. Tungsten may not emit radiation, but, in common with DU, its particles are poisonous.

It is alleged that DU causes leukaemia?
Leukaemia is caused by (inter alia):
- Ionising radiation - x-rays, for example
- Derivatives of benzene (hydraulic fluid, lubricating oil, fuel oil, ceramic armour and other products found in modern armoured vehicles)
- Viruses

What happens when a DU round hits a tank?
The DU penetrator hits the tank armour, both the penetrator and armour partially liquefying under pressure. Once the armour has been perforated, that part of the penetrator which has not melted, together with the molten armour and fragments that break away from the interior, ricochet inside the vehicle. This usually causes a fire. Studies in the USA, UK and France show that when an armoured vehicle burns at about 10,000 degrees C, the resulting oxidisation of the materials aboard, including benzene products and depleted uranium, can create particulates that are harmful to the human body; ingested they can affect the lungs and kidneys.

[telomerase]

>U-238, or depleted uranium, is a neutron absorber, which means you end up fizzling your chain reaction.

No, this is not correct. If the temperature is sufficiently high, energy is produced from the U238 tamper. So U238 may not work in the "primer" of a fission/fusion/fission bomb, but it works fine in the tamper jacket.

The US test bomb Bassoon Prime - used in the Redwing Tewa test - had a uranium tamper, and had a yield of 5 MT, 87% of that coming from fission. U238 does produce energy. Do a web search and dig up that old 1950s technology that you whippersnappers have forgotten :)

(And, of course, U238 is the starting material for breeding plutonium... I'm sure some of our "depleted" U will return home one way or another.)

[HBK]

Depleted Uranium never kiled anybody.

[Gewehr98]

U238 does fission, it just has to get really hot. Half or more of the energy from a standard "fusion" bomb comes from the jacket of "depleted" uranium that surrounds the core (which consists of a Pu fission bomb and lithium deuteride fusion fuel).

U-238 is a neutron absorber and reflector, as stated above by Frohickey. It will not fission without a healthy boost of neutrons, but then again, almost any element's nucleus can and will split in the neutron-flux environment of an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. U-238 is used as the tamper around the bomb's pit, or core, which is a chunk of sub-critical Pu-239 or U-235. Around the tamper is the high/low-explosive initiator, which is precisely timed to implode the tamper in a perfectly spherical shock wave, compressing both the tamper and the pit. As the internal density of the pit increases under compression, it reaches criticality. The now-compressed tamper of U-238 helps keep the neutrons moving inside the pit by reflecting them back inside, where they do the most good initiating more fissions in the Pu-239 or U-235 pit. The U-238 is used to enhance efficiency, thereby boosting the final yield of the device.


http://www.486th.org/Assn/images/FMan.JPG

U-238 serves an important function in a breeder reactor, as the seed material for Pu-239. U-238 in the reactor's fuel rods, by virtue of neutron capture, becomes Uranium-239, which has a half life of only 24 minutes before throwing off a Beta particle and becoming Neptunium-239. Np-239 has a half-life of 2.3 days, again undergoing beta decay before becoming Pu-239. Pu-239 is a neutron emitter, and is fissile, hence it being the more popular of fuels for weapons and submarine reactors.

The North Koreans are dissolving their spent nuclear reactor fuel rods in nitric acid, thereby liberating the Pu-239 created as a daughter product when the reactor was operating.

Depleted uranium, which is mostly U-238, has slight radioactivity, due to the fact that between 0.25% to 0.30% of DU is fissile residual U-235. The bigger problem than the residual radioactivity is the very serious health risk of ingestion, it's a highly-toxic heavy metal (1.7 times the mass of lead). And that's the primary threat to troops exposed to the after-effects of DU rounds after a T-series tank has it's turret "cleaned out" by an A-10 round.

[telomerase]

>The U-238 is used to enhance efficiency, thereby boosting the final yield of the device.

It is NOT just the "tamping" effect that increases efficiency. Bombs with lead tampers have typically half the energy release of U238 tamper bombs (the most famous example being the 50 megaton Soviet test that was exploded "clean", with a lead tamper).

This being said I don't have a detailed fission diagram handy, and I don't know the exact pathway for most of the reactions. I could imagine that some of the U238 goes to Pu 239 and immediately fissions, but I don't know.

But U238 does release energy, or the world's bomb designers are all wrong.

[Triad]

Bombs with lead tampers have typically half the energy release of U238 tamper bombs (the most famous example being the 50 megaton Soviet test that was exploded "clean", with a lead tamper).
So if it had used a U238 tamper, would it have been a 100 megaton bomb?

[twoblink]

DU rounds will kill you if you swallow them.. That's why I don't swallow them..:D

Other than that, they are dense, don't shatter, and given F=mA, more m = more F, which means better penetration, but most of that is covered above..

[seeker_two]

Depleted Uranium never kiled anybody. \

I'm sure there are a few Iraqi tank crews that would disagree... :evil:

BTW, is anyone a LITTLE disconcerted that a diagram of a nuclear bomb has been posted on this site?.... :what:





...and wouldn't plans like those be more appropriate in the Gunsmithing section, anyway? :D

[Kharn]

Seeker:
Pictures like that have been in encyclopedias for years, the general idea of how to build a nuclear bomb is common knowledge but the specifics you need to know to actually build it are a lot harder to come by.

Kharn

[Traveler]

Back to the original question (one of them anyway), DU is somewhat difficult to work, being hard on machine tools (cutters). Those would be some expensive rifle bullets. But they would be interesting in one of the sabot configurations for say a .30 cal magnum. Fast, high sectional density, and superior penetration. Good for disabiling soft vehicles when a .50 is out of the question.

[hso]

"A more important early use was as the "tamping" material between the high explosives and plutonium core of implosion bombs, such as the first Fat Man bomb design used at Alamogordo, New Mexico; Nagasaki, Japan; and twice at Operation CROSSROADS. A large mass of U-238 acted both to hold the core together until it could fission more efficiently and to reflect neutrons back into the core for more fissions. The plutonium core of Fat Man was only the size of a grapefruit, but the U-238 tamper and explosive lens surrounding it increased the bomb diameter to five feet.

In addition, about 20 percent of the Fat Man TNT-equivalent explosive yield of twenty-one thousand tons was from fast-neutron fission of U-238, because large quantities of fast neutrons are produced in a fission explosion.

This capability of U-238 to fast fission led to its use in thermonuclear bombs to create more explosive yield. The reaction became fission of a small trigger fission bomb to create the heat and pressure for fusion of hydrogen-containing components, then fission of U-238 by fast neutrons produced in copious amounts by both the fission trigger and fusion reaction.

A negative aspect was production of large amounts of fission products in the fission-fusion-fission reaction from the large amount of DU employed to enhance total explosive yield significantly compared to the large fusion yield. This greatly increased fission product inventory was essentially the opposite of the "clean bomb" development intent.

Resultant heavy fallout from tests such as Shot Bravo, during 1954 in the Pacific, caused beta burns and overexposure of Japanese working on the "Lucky Dragon" fishing boat, Americans on Navy ships caught in the fallout, Marshall Islanders exposed on Rongelap Island, as well as American military personnel on Rongerik Island."

This and other sources of information indicate that U-238 acts as a tamper, neutron reflector, and as a "bonus" adds to yeald due to fast neutron fission.

[shermacman]

The amount of knowledge in our group of people is absolutely astonishing. I can not contribute to this thread cuz I know nothing about the subject. But I am proud to simply be able to post.

[Vern Humphrey]

Back in 1998, I wrote the manual the Chemical Center used in some training exercises and studies (and the material finally wound up in Field Manuals) on operations in an NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) environment.

Depleted Uranium (DU) is less radioactive than granite rock -- while in theory, the Alpha particles it occasionally emits COULD cause problems if you ingested it, you would die of heavy metal poisoning long before that happened.

The primary danger from DU (other than being hit by a DU projectile) is in breatining the ash that is left after a vehicle hit with a DU round burns. Therefore we prescribed that mechanics and intelligence personnel working around such vehicles wear masks and wash down before unmasking.

[Sean Smith]

Light reading for those interested:

http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/

:D

[hso]

I agree with Vern on the hazards of DU. DU metal is more of a toxilogical than radiological hazard. Permissible exposure limits for U are as follows -

0.05 mg/m3 air for soluble compounds

0.2 mg/m3 air for insoluble compounds

Vern, did you consider the insoluble oxide to be primary product or did you treat everything as salts?

[Mal H]

seeker_two - BTW, is anyone a LITTLE disconcerted that a diagram of a nuclear bomb has been posted on this site?....Speaking for the management, not at all. As Kharn said, pictures have been around for a long time, but the technical specifics are hard to come by and even if they are available, the implementation of them is extremely difficult. See those little black bumps around the perimeter in the picture? Those little bumps are some of the most difficult things in the bomb to get right. If they aren't manufactured correctly and interconnected correctly, you will only have a conventional bomb, quite a powerful one for sure and a dirty one, but not a fission bomb.

[seeker_two]

I was kidding, of course... ;)


...but I still think it belongs in the Gunsmithing section. :D

[Carlos Cabeza]

There were two guys sitting in an airplane. One guy says to the other,
"Let's talk. I hear that the flights go faster if you strike up a
conversation with your fellow passenger."

The other guy who had just opened a good book, closed it and asked him, "What do you want to talk about?"

The first guy says, "Oh, I don't know; how about we discuss Nuclear
fission."

The other guy says, "Well, let me ask you a question first. A horse, a
cow, and a deer are all eating the same thing, but the deer ????s out pellets, the cow ????s big patties, and the horse ????s clumps of dried grass. Why is that?"

The first guy says, "I don't know."

The other guy says, "Oh? Then how can you expect to talk about Nuclear
fission when you don't know ????."

:D This is all I can add to this thread. :D Hope I don't get paxed.

[Gewehr98]

"Oh? Then how can you expect to talk about Nuclear Fission when you don't know?

Easy. Some people are paid to actually know. Just for example, my job is flying this beast around the world looking for evidence of nuclear weapons tests, and Chernobyl-style accidents. I won't even begin to count the time I've spent at the NTS in Mercury, Nevada, Savannah River, Los Alamos, Lawrence-Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories. Part of my go-to kit is a GE Chart of the Nuclides, a copy of 10CFR, an ADM-300 survey meter suite, my thermoluminescent dosimeter, helmet and O2 mask, and a spare change of clothing if we make contact with a debris cloud. We're certified by the NRC as Radiation Safety Officers. The continuous training and attention to details came in handy when we intercepted and tracked Chernobyl's debris cloud as it circled the globe.

And there was a lot of radioactive caribou poop as a result of that accident, by the way. It was one of many conversations among the crewmembers as we were sitting aboard our fleet of WC-135's tracking alpha, beta, and gamma contamination. Some people spend their careers assembling nuclear weapons. We literally pick up the pieces afterwards. And that's just one member of this forum, who knows what other professionals are lurking here, among 6,456 at last look. :scrutiny:



http://mauser98.com/wc-135pic1.jpg[]

[MeekandMild]

Vern Humphrey, you beat me to it, telling the good stuff. The oxide dust is where you get really nasty problems and that oxide is generated whenever you burn a tank or plane with uranium in it.

But you underestimate the radiation effect. When a person breaths uranium oxide, regardless whether 235 or 238 it sits in his lungs for a while then is concentrated in the mediastinal lymph nodes. So it produces lung cancer, lymphoma and leukemia.

I didn't write the book but I had to read the edition previous to yours when I was sitting on alert for an Air Force broken arrow response team. :rolleyes:

[hso]

MeekandMild,

How does the U3O8 go from the lung to the lymph node?

[Frohickey]

The other guy says, "Well, let me ask you a question first. A horse, a
cow, and a deer are all eating the same thing, but the deer ????s out pellets, the cow ????s big patties, and the horse ????s clumps of dried grass. Why is that?"

The first guy says, "I don't know."

The other guy says, "Oh? Then how can you expect to talk about Nuclear
fission when you don't know ????."

Deer pellets, cow patties are horse poop are required to make nuclear bombs? Wow... didn't know they were that high tech. :D :D :D

[hso]

FYI

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/utox.html
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/ruxd.html
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dbkcr.html
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts150.html
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/policy/cur_du.htm

[Daniel]

Greetings all,

A question that I would like answered: With current tech. Do we (humans) have the ability to build a thermonuclear weapon that could kill all life on Earth?

[HBK]

Of course.

[Carlos Cabeza]

:D Good reply to an assinine post Gewehr98. :D I had no intention of directing that post at any of THR's members, I am very impressed with the knowledge base of our members at THR. We are a diverse and educated group. Unlike the stereotypical "redneck knuckle draggers over at GT". :D J/K ! That joke was sent to me by a friend who is well versed in the technical aspects of nuclear physics and he sent it to me because I am always trying to get into some of his more technical discussions with other engineers. So in reality the joke was originally directed at me. :D
Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. This is really a good thread that clearly displays the intellect of the member base here at THR. :cool:


radioactive caribou poop :D

[hso]

Daniel,

If your question is serious, then the answer is no.

[blackrazor]

Hey,

This may seem a little of topic, but does anyone know where you can buy the blueprints for fatman/littleboy? I remember seeing them for sale in the Atomic Bomb Museum in New Mexico a while ago and wish I had bought a set ever since. Are they available for download? thanks.

[MeekandMild]

How does the U3O8 go from the lung to the lymph node?
Strange little cell called the alveolar macrophage. It acts sort of like a cross between an ameba and a vacuum cleaner and transports all kinds of bad stuff to the lymph nodes. Does the same thing with bacteria, silica and asbestos.

Trouble with alpha rays is they irradiate the local area, so they produce tiny litle areas of mutation leading to cancers.

Here is some interesting stuff: http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/www/outreach/pdf/2edmmrchandbook.pdf

[hso]

MandM - Thanks

[AJ Dual]

Greetings all,

A question that I would like answered: With current tech. Do we (humans) have the ability to build a thermonuclear weapon that could kill all life on Earth?

I read that the Soviet Union started a project to end the world if the third world war broke out, and it looked like they were going to lose. The plan was supposed to be a tanker packed with 30,000 tons of lithium deturide and triggered by a fission-fusion-fission bomb. It would be armed and detonated by gieger counters automatically set to monitor the easterly winds from the Soviet Union from the Pacific ocean. If the level got too high, the Soviet Union was assumed destroyed, and the bomb would go off.

Kruschev got wind of the plans and canceled the project post haste. They had actually begun to lay the keel of the ship.

So was the "No World without Communisim" super-bomb real, or just an urban-legend borne of Dr. Strangelove? I find tons of cites of this tale on the net, but no authoritative articles. :scrutiny:

[telomerase]

>Do we (humans) have the ability to build a thermonuclear weapon that could kill all life on Earth?

Most life on Earth, in terms of mass, is deep underground archaebacteria. To kill every archaebacteria we would have to smash the planet's crust (one good way is to ram it with starship chunks at .5 c or so), then sterilize the debris. This could be done with 1950s technology; Project Orion did a good study on building an H-bomb-powered starship. It would be easier today, since we have mapped more of the System's asteroids and comets. Diverting comets and NEO asteroids to strike the Earth multiplies the explosive force by thousands, since even a few puny nukes can guide a large comet to impact. (The farther out the comet, the larger the impact, but the smaller the impulse necessary to send the comet toward the sun. Halfway to Alpha Centauri a good kick would do it, though you'd have to wait a while for the result).

So the short answer is yes, if we're willing to work very hard at it for centuries. Maybe one century if we collect the He-3 from Neptune.

I suspect you were interested in destroying all HUMAN life, because that's just the way you are. While this is easier than killing the archaebacteria, it's still a task far beyond the current combined arsenals. Read The Effects Of Nuclear Weapons for a good summary of weapon effects, it will let you calculate the damage from whatever you assume the level of nuclear weaponry to be. I think (don't quote me) most studies put curent weaponry at between 10,000 to 40,000 megatons. This is much smaller than the asteroids that hit every ten million years; I think it's more around the million-year average. Of course the asteroids aren't specifically aimed to hit you, and the bombs are.

If you're just interested in whether nuclear weapons will exterminate YOU, the answer is probably yes. The US government has worked very hard to make enemies everywhere and to build no civil defense, no missile defense, and for that matter no air defense to speak of. The Swiss have given some thought to this, but no one ever listens to them; they've avoided war for 200 years, what could they possibly know...:

http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/attack_switzerland.htm

Re: the Doomsday bomb. Dyson says that 1960s bombs would produce about 5 megatons to the ton of bomb, so a 30,000-ton bomb would be 150,000 megatons (? I need a CRC to figure out if this is just an engineering limit or the real one). That's nowhere near enough to destroy the planet... and destroying the planet isn't very relevant to political struggles.

[VaughnT]

I would just like to say that I am deeply moved when I see such a depth and breadth of knowledge on a website like this.

It's at times like these that I feel like an absolute idiot.

[hso]

AndrewWalkowiak,

The soviet tankerbomb, if it even existed as some demented doomsday plan, could not have worked. Think about the delicate balance of titanic forces that have to follow the proper sequence to make any fusion weapon work. Considering this the whole thing would have blown itself to pieces without producing any more damage than a standard H bomb:uhoh: (Ok, so an H bomb is more than enough damage all by itself) Anyway, if this thing were sitting in the ocean and it went SPLOOSH you'd just have a surface test.

[telomerase]

>Think about the delicate balance of titanic forces that have to follow the proper sequence to make any fusion weapon work.

Unless they just built 30,000 five-megaton bombs (or more likely, 300 of the 100-meg design that they tested) and detonated them simultaneously. It sounds funny but the timers on implosion triggers have to be that accurate anyway to make the implosion work. (OK, maybe only 299 would work properly, but think of the redundancy factor).

I can think of other ways to set off 30,000 tons of lithium deuteride... but still can't think of a good political motive.

[hso]

What you're suggesting is an array of weapons as precisely positioned and detonated around a "super core" as the chemical explosives in a standard nuclear weapon. I don't think that you can scale up that way and not have the fractional difference from one weapon to the next disrupt your super weapon.

[Daniel]

The reason I asked: When reading up on thermonuclear weapons. One point has always stuck: There is no theoretical maximum yield for a thermonuclear weapon.

IIRC, it takes 100 million megatons to cause mass extinction on a global scale (surface/complex life I guess) -- just wondering if we could build one.

[owen]

Daniel,

When you are done with your superbomb, I recommend a ransom of ONE BILLION DOLLARS!!!
















:D :D :D

[MarineTech]

I see that the thread seems to be wandering away from DU and towards nuclear weapons, but I thought I'd interject with an interesting sideline.

Back in the mid to late 80's, I read an article about the development of the HK CAWS shotgun project. One thing that really sticks in mind from that article even today is that HK was looking at developing a slug round penetrator for the system using a DU penetrator in a sabot. Apparently it was to be used against opponents in HEAVY body armor, regular vehicles, and lightly armored vehicles (about the same armor level as the M113).

I'm haven't seen anything else about it since the CAWS project was cancelled, but it made for some interesting reading.

[Vern Humphrey]

Now I'll let you in on a secret -- many years ago, I used to shoot a flintlock in competition. You want instantaneous ignition with a flintlock -- weak sparks produce hangfires, and hangfires produce misses.

I annealed my frizzen -- heated it cherry red and let it cool. I drilledl holes in it, then cut a sheet of Depleted Uranium to fit the sole of the frizzen, and riveted it in place using coat hanger wire in those holes and a small hammer to form the rivet heads.

That was 25 years ago, and that rifle still sparks like nobody's business.

[MeekandMild]

OK, some specific answers for this question. May be right. May be wrong. Tinfoil hats won't help.

http://www.mod.uk/issues/gulfwar/info/depleted/du.htm

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/calc.html

http://www.laddresearch.com/wsmsds/21397.htm

[Vern Humphrey]

Quote (from the UK MOD source):
-------------------------------------------------
DU burns in air to form highly insoluble oxides. The main internal radiation hazard is from the inhalation of these insoluble oxides. The alpha and beta radiation from the retained material over a long period of time could cause damage to the lung tissue.
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Comment: the amount necessary to produce radiation damage "over a long period of time" would kill you through heavy metal poisoning before you suffered measurable radiation damage.

Treat DU (and DU ash) as if it were lead, and you won't go wrong.

[Radix]

This is extremely facinating stuff, but I just have one additional comment on this from the begining

From .45FMGJoe...
The velocity doesn't affect the "knock down"power. Acceleration does. True a faster moving projectile stopped in the same distance as a slower one will produce more force, but it's the acceleration that counts.

It is all about energy. The objective it to transmit the maximum amount of energy from point A to point B. The only way to get it there is Kinetic Energy. KE=.5*m*v^2 If the technology has maxed out the velocity (which has a whole lot of dynamics problems (stability) if pushed too far) then the only way to increase the kinetic energy is to increase the mass.

At impact the kinetic energy is translated into many other forms of energy including heat, noise, and work. The work is defined as W=F*d where d is the distance the force acts over.

So there will be all this energy that impacts the target, some becomes noise, some heats the target and the projectile, some is work done by deforming the target (and the projectile), and if there is still energy left when it puches through, it gets dissapated rattling around inside (bad for occupants)

Now punching through is all a function of stress. This stress is imparted by the applied force multiplied by the area. So you want to apply the force over the smallest area possible. So now we need a large mass that is small in size. High density materials are key. This is the reason for using DU, one of the densest metals around.

Thats the reasoning from a solid mechanics point of view anyway.

Oh, and by the way...

HBK said:
Depleted Uranium never kiled anybody.

Tell that to anyone that has been on the receiving end of a DU projectile! :D

[artherd]

There was much speculation (that we now know to be not only false, but exactly HOW false) that the first nuclear weapon detonated might set off a chain reaction and literally begin fusing the atmosphere.

Oxygen will fuse.

Nitrogen will fuse.

Stars go NOVA when they fuse everything they've got into iron, and then collapse so hard that the IRON fuses... (Iron is particularly energetic when fused :)

In terms of Blowing Up the Earth(TM) the current stock won't really do it. It will make a royal mess, but life will likely continue.

We would need an event that disturbs the crust to a spectacular degree, and/or actually disturbs the atmosphere itself.

For that level we are talking about a large asteroid or comet (even better, comets are faster.)

Now, do the materials exist terrestrially such that, using current technology, we could conceivably generate enough explosive power to end most multicellular life on the planet?

I would hazard a guess at 'yes'.

[The_Antibubba]

Vern,

I'm not a Constitutional scholar (yet!), but when the Founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment, I'm sure the didn't intend for the regular citizenry to use and possess NUKULAR MUSKETS!!! :what:

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So, for those of you in the know (and who can discuss it), what is the state of research into antimatter production for weapons use?

[Tom Bri]

I read about these DU frizzens in "Muzzle Blasts" magazine. They were said to be a BAAAD idea. You get a spray of toxic heavy metal particles in the face with every shot. You could buy these mail order back in the 60s, till someone realised this.

[MeekandMild]

I thought this must have been kidding until I looked it up. (http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/dufrizzen.htm) :what: :confused: :rolleyes:

[Vern Humphrey]

Quote:
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I read about these DU frizzens in "Muzzle Blasts" magazine. They were said to be a BAAAD idea. You get a spray of toxic heavy metal particles in the face with every shot. You could buy these mail order back in the 60s, till someone realised this.
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I've used mine for more than 30 years, and it never affected me.:D

[Tom Bri]

Quote: ...I've used mine for more than 30 years, and it never affected me....

Losing your hair or it's turning grey?;)

[Vern Humphrey]

I may be a bit challenged in the barber department, but it's handy having an extra hand growing out of the middle of your chest.:D

[MeekandMild]

If it is that important, why don't they make frizzens from ferrocerium? It would probably be safer than DU.:rolleyes:

[Vern Humphrey]

I don't know -- I put that half-sole on more than 30 years ago.

In those days, you could get DU for things like the keels for racing yachts -- it gave you the weight without the drag of a larger keel of iron or some other metal.

[MrAcheson]

It is all about energy.

Actually if you want measure the ability to knock something down you want to use momentum, mass X velocity, as pangris originally suggested. Momentum is always conserved and its purely mechanical so it is great for that. Momentum doesn't usually mean much with tanks though because they are so heavy that they can soak it up without moving much.

If you want to measure how much damage you will cause (like what you are talking about), energy is a better number. The problem with energy is you always end up with lots of transformations to non-mechanical work so the math gets much more involved and technical. For instance you really shouldn't talk about bullet impact without talking about heat caused by work on body tissues. But few people ever do because it gets really complicated really fast.

BTW why did this thread get resurrected?

[Firethorn]

It was about the symptoms people were having after examining tanks destroyed in GWI with DU. The article kept going on about radiation, but when I looked at the symptom list, I said 'heavy metal poisoning'. If they'd worn their gas masks (it does filter particles), they'd have been fine.

I've had NBC training, and I always got a bit upset when they were discussing the 'radioactivity' of DU (battlefix: slap a coat of paint on it). They never once discussed the CHEMICAL dangers of DU. Oh well, last time I had to go through the class, DU wasn't mentioned.

[Vern Humphrey]

Masking is a good idea, but washing is even more important. Ash on your hands can be carried into the body when eating.