And if so, what factors determine it?
I know that the scale of the explosion is an insane amount larger than the teeny molecules causing it, but I’m wondering if there could ever be nuclear explosions small enough to take out a single house or block, rather than a whole city from high above.
In: Physics
There is a lower limit to the size of a nuclear bomb. In order to explode you need a critical mass of fissile material. In fact the Little Boy nuclear bomb that were dropped over Hiroshima was just two halves of a nuclear core which when put together would detonate. The only thing needed is the mass of the fissile material in close proximity.
There are various factors which change how little fissile materials you need though. Things like neutron reflectors lowers the mass needed. And you can compress the material with high explosives to get it close enough together to detonate. So we were able to create significantly smaller nuclear bombs then the Little Boy. For example the US Mark 54 nuclear warhead developed in the late 50s weighed less then 25kg for the entire warhead. That was small enough to be used by infantry and fighter jets. There were also rumors of briefcase sized nuclear bombs, but most of these rumors comes from “dirty bombs” where most of the energy in the explosion would come from the conventional explosives and the nuclear material would primarily be there to irradiate the area to make it uninhabitable.
Latest Answers