Talk:Variable yield

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Fission/fusion

Shouldn't it be "Uranium fission tamper" instead of "Uranium fusion tamper"? Jbhood 00:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Nuclearweaponarchive.org says it was the fusion stage tamper that was replaced. Because this material surrounding the fusion fuel serves as a pusher/tamper for the fusion stage, shouldn't it be called fusion tamper? It is true that the uranium tamper of the original design was ment to undergo fast fission, but it's still the tamper of the fusion stage. Therefore I propose following wording: "fissionable uranium tamper was replaced with fusion tamper made of lead" or something to that effect. I'm not going to edit it yet. I'm waiting for someone to come up with a convincing argument for why the correct term should be "fission tamper"?130.234.5.136 21:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, I didn´t know what I was doing when I changed fusion to fission. I´ll change it back. Jbhood 13:02, 3 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to delete the comment about some weapons not achiving supercritical mass without boosting. This claim is nonsense. Boosting doesn't kick off until you already get 250-300 tons yield, which you clearly won't get without a supercritical assembly. Georgewilliamherbert 08:11, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lower yields

There's an expanation of how a bomb's yield can be incresed from 20 Kt to to 475 Kt with the introduction of tritium. It'd be interesting to learn how the smaller yields are achieved, such as .3 Kt. Will Beback talk 19:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This needs some work, yes.

Modern nuclear weapons are largely boosted primary thermonuclear weapons, and there are several staging options available for yield:

Minimum primary yield - no boost gas (deuterium/tritium), no or reduced or alternately timed pulse neutron generator input, no thermonuclear secondary yield
Mid primary yield - partial boost gas, reduced or alternately timed pulse neutron generator, no thermonuclear secondary yield
Maximum primary yield - full boost gas, full properly timed pulse neutron generator, but no thermonuclear secondary yield
Full yield - all of the above plus the secondary.

The B61-10 example given would be 0.3 kt minimum primary yield, 5 kt mid primary yield, 10 kt max primary yield, and 80 kt full yield including the secondary.

The description of the W88 is not adequate.

Not firing the secondary is easy - use some sort of openable/closeable shutters between the primary and secondary, so that the radiation doesn't fill the full radiation case and implode the secondary efficiently. They only have to be about as effective a containment barrier as the primary's radiation case is, so it's not very large or heavy or complicated. Lower primary yields may well also have this effect naturally, but firing the primary at full yield without any secondary requires some radiation redirection mechanism... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 23:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Motivation?

It might help to mention the motivations for such a feature. When i have discussed it with others, they wonder why you wouldn't always just use the biggest bang possible. This leads to interaction with the viability of lower-yield weapons in escalation strategy and theory. Dbrower (talk) 20:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]