LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #827, Tuesday, (12/10/2024)
NUCLEAR INSANITY & THE LAST DAYS OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY? ~ LLAW
A modern detonator (left) is much smaller than a 1940s-era detonator. Credit to: Los Alamos National Laboratory (from the article)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS WE FACE TODAY AND THEIR RISKS FOR TOMORROW
Since the financial news media simply cannot stop talking about AI/Nuclear merging together and what a “great” idea it is, but since I absolutely disagree, I decided to post a more educational story today while the constant stories about AI/Nuclear and investor money fill the “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear” media pages . . . This article, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, surprised me because I had thought that nuclear detonators were huge triggers that took large mechanical force for impact nuclear weapons, or high voltage electronic triggers(for airborne nuclear bomb denotations.
Obviously the nuclear weapons systems of detonating nuclear bombs has come a long way since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1946 . . . ~llaw
Small but mighty
Los Alamos National Laboratory serves as the production agency for all detonators.
December 9, 2024
“Extremely small and extremely important.” That’s just one of the ways Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Detonator Manufacturing Office leader Jim Shipley describes the detonators that the Lab builds. Los Alamos is the only place in the country that manufactures detonators for nuclear weapons.
Because different weapons use different types of detonators, Los Alamos currently manufactures seven different types of detonators simultaneously. Five of these types were designed at Los Alamos, and the other two were designed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In 2023, the Lab delivered more than 3,000 detonators to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees all aspects of nuclear weapon design, maintenance, and production. “The detonators are built in lots of a few hundred and it typically takes about a year to build a full lot of detonators,” Shipley says.
After building a lot, the team pulls a certain number of detonators out to test them. “The tests ensure they meet the specifications, which are highly exacting as we are a production agency building parts for the nation’s nuclear stockpile,” Shipley says.
Shipley describes the products his division makes as “crucial.”
A nuclear weapon detonates in a carefully choreographed sequence in which detonators trigger the high explosives surrounding the plutonium pit at the core of the weapon. The resulting explosion causes the pit to compress and implode, initiating a nuclear reaction.
The first step of this process begins when an electrical charge or a laser (depending on the type of detonator) within the detonator produces a shockwave that triggers a small amount of included explosive material. This detonator explosive then triggers the larger quantity of high explosives surrounding the pit.
“The way detonators work is fascinating,” says Shipley. “The physics is so complex, and the timescales are so short.”
The Lab is exploring the merits of using detonators that use optical energy instead of electricity to set off the internal explosion. By using radiation at a specific wavelength, an optical detonator removes the hazard posed by electrical initiation and reduces the risk of accidental detonation.
However they are initiated, the detonators, the explosives inside them, and the explosives surrounding the pit must all work together to ensure a successful nuclear reaction. Because of this, the scientists who design and produce detonators work closely with the scientists who design and produce explosives. Conveniently, those scientists work at Los Alamos as well, which makes collaborating easier for everyone involved, according to Margo Greenfield, High Explosives Sciences and Technology group leader.
“We collaborate closely with the Detonator Production team,” Greenfield says. “We provide the explosive, we conduct studies of how the detonators and the explosives are aging, and we work together to solve problems.”
(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, to Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
TODAY’s NUCLEAR WORLD’s NEWS, Tuesday, (12/10/2024)
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
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Small but mighty - gov.lanl.discover - Los Alamos National Laboratory
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