Uranium Grenade: Can it exist, if so..why hasn't it been used?

[swansont]

I was really thinking a mechanically launched grenade against a protected target.

We have mortars for that. Still probably too close, though.

[John Cuthber]

Any minute(man) now, someone is going to reinvent the ICBM.

[Carrock]

You can swallow explosives and die of poisoning, but that's not how the device was intended to work.

No need to swallow explosives, just absorb the neutrons through your skin.

 

I was referring to your statement

 

At best it would be exceedingly difficult to get an explosion that's just a few times bigger than a conventional explosive of similar size, and then you'd have a lot of unused nuclear material lying about to be scavenged.

Starting from scratch, it would just be a matter of using smaller quantities of conventional explosives to cause a slower precursor implosion, less constraints on initial expansion of fissile material so that it becomes subcritical more quickly etc.

There's probably been a few 'failures' where a prototype bomb released 'only' e.g. 2 tons TNT equivalent of energy.

 

Just discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield

For example, the Mod-10 B61 bomb had selectable explosive yields of 0.3, 5, 10 or 80 kilotons, depending on how the ground crew set a dial inside the casing when it was loaded onto an aircraft.

The Neutron_bomb, loosely any device with a yield of < 10 kilotons, designed to provide a lethal radiation dose with minimal damage to property, approximates a nuclear grenade for a suicide bomber who would survive to fight another day, but not another week.. Happily in America at least, the last of these seems to have been dismantled in 2006.

 

Overdoing 'tickling the dragon' does not lead in general to an explosion since even slight thermal expansion or at worst melting would quickly make the fissile material non critical.

 

 

Any minute(man) now, someone is going to reinvent the ICBM.

No need. There's still enough for a good few megadeaths (gigadeaths?).

[swansont]

No need to swallow explosives, just absorb the neutrons through your skin.I was referring to your statement Starting from scratch, it would just be a matter of using smaller quantities of conventional explosives to cause a slower precursor implosion, less constraints on initial expansion of fissile material so that it becomes subcritical more quickly etc.There's probably been a few 'failures' where a prototype bomb released 'only' e.g. 2 tons TNT equivalent of energy.Just discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yieldThe Neutron_bomb, loosely any device with a yield of < 10 kilotons, designed to provide a lethal radiation dose with minimal damage to property, approximates a nuclear grenade for a suicide bomber who would survive to fight another day, but not another week.. Happily in America at least, the last of these seems to have been dismantled in 2006.Overdoing 'tickling the dragon' does not lead in general to an explosion since even slight thermal expansion or at worst melting would quickly make the fissile material non critical. No need. There's still enough for a good few megadeaths (gigadeaths?).

As I said, you would have a lot of material left after such a "fizzle"; if such an event happened, it was with more than a critical mass. Neutron bombs still had to exceed critical mass.

[Endy0816]

We have mortars for that. Still probably too close, though.

 

Was basically the idea for the Davy Crockett.

 

 

 

I'm sure they weren't fully aware of the consequences of exposure though. Probably for the best they were never used in combat.

[swansont]

50 lb warhead, 18 ton yield. Referred to as the smallest nuke in one of the Google results.

 

By the time they developed it I expect they had a good idea of the exposre issues.

[StringJunky]

By the time they developed it I expect they had a good idea of the exposre issues.

"You try it first"

 

No, you can"

 

Toss you for it?"

 

[Endy0816]

Not sure tey realized longterm issues. Seemed real happy considering radiation effects in the video they mad.