32.7 Nuclear Weapons

Critical mass and assembly in fission bombs, the fission-triggered thermonuclear stage, and the blast, thermal and fallout consequences of a detonation.

College Physics 2e, 32.7 Nuclear Weapons

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7 exercises

32.7 Exercise 5

Find the mass converted into energy by a 12.0-kT bomb.

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32.7 Exercise 7

Fusion bombs use neutrons from their fission trigger to create tritium fuel in the reaction $n +^{6} \text{Li} \rightarrow^{3} \text{H} +^{4} \text{He}$ . What is the energy released by this reaction in MeV?

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32.7 Exercise 9

A radiation-enhanced nuclear weapon (or neutron bomb) can have a smaller total yield and still produce more prompt radiation than a conventional nuclear bomb. This allows the use of neutron bombs to kill nearby advancing enemy forces with radiation without blowing up your own forces with the blast. For a 0.500-kT radiation-enhanced weapon and a 1.00-kT conventional nuclear bomb: (a) Compare the bl…

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32.7 Exercise 11

Assume one-fourth of the yield of a typical 320-kT strategic bomb comes from fission reactions averaging 200 MeV and the remainder from fusion reactions averaging 20 MeV.

(a) Calculate the number of fissions and the approximate mass of uranium and plutonium fissioned, taking the average atomic mass to be 238.

(b) Find the number of fusions and calculate the approximate mass of fusion fuel, assumin…

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32.7 Exercise 13

It is estimated that weapons tests in the atmosphere have deposited approximately 9 MCi of $^{\text{90}} \text{Sr}$ on the surface of the earth. Find the mass of this amount of $^{\text{90}} \text{Sr}$ .

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Integrated Concepts

One scheme to put nuclear weapons to nonmilitary use is to explode them underground in a geologically stable region and extract the geothermal energy for electricity production. There was a total yield of about 4,000 MT in the combined arsenals in 2006. If 1.00 MT per day could be converted to electricity with an efficiency of 10.0%:

(a) What would the average electrical power output be?

(b) How…

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Critical Thinking

A spherical target in a body is being targeted with $\beta^{+}$ radiation. The target is centered at $(\text{0} .\text{00},\textrm{ }\text{2} .\text{00},\textrm{ }\text{3} .\text{00})$ on a grid that is in centimeters. The target has a radius of 0.500 centimeters. (a) What two points on the x-axis are at the extremes of where the positrons annihilate the electrons? (b) What two points on the y-axis are at the extremes of where the positrons annihilate the electrons? (c) What can be said…

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