Atomic bomb limitations

An explosion occurs when energy previously confined is suddenly released to affect the surroundings. Small explosions, like the bursting of a toy balloon, are familiar and innocuous, but large-scale explosions, like an atomic bomb, are rare and usually disastrous. Between these two extremes lie the commercial and conventional military fields where explosions are produced on a limited scale to cause specific effects. It is with explosions of this intermediate scale that this book is concerned. 

The core problem with the antipsychiatry approach is its practical limitations. How exactly does it assist the distressed individual who is suffering from the delusion that they have an atomic bomb inside their body It will be shown later that psychotherapy without drug treatment is largely ineffective (as Jung and Fried both concluded), whereas psychological therapy combined with active drug treatment is the most effective therapeutic approach. 

The specter of chemical death persists. Like atom bombs, chemical weapons have been classified as weapons of mass destruction. But were they, and are they Nerve agents such as VX and sarin can certainly kill swiftly. But so can hundreds of familiar drugs and poisons. The real question is whether anyone within the limits of current technology can, in fact, use them effectively as lethal weapons on the battlefield. 

After the development and successful explosion of the atomic bomb toward the end of World War II, an urgent search for workable uranium deposits was set in motion all over the world, The only high-grade deposits known to the western world were those in the countries just named as radium sources, but in view of the limited demand previously, serious exploration for uranium had never been undertaken, However, die offer of contracts by die U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, for fixed quantities at stated prices stimulated exploration for this hitherto largely ignored material. 

The nuclear fuel consists of uranium, usually in the form of its oxide, U3O8 (Figure 23.12). Naturally occurring uranium contains about 0.7 percent of the uranium-235 isotope, which is too low a concentration to sustain a small-scale chain reaction. For effective operation of a light water reactor, uranium-235 must be enriched to a concentration of 3 or 4 percent. In principle, the main difference between an atomic bomb and a nuclear reactor is that the chain reaction that takes place in a nuclear reactor is kept under control at all times. The factor limiting the rate of the reaction is the number of neutrons present. This can be controlled by lowering cadmium or boron rods between the fuel elements. These rods capture neutrons according to the equations... 

There is no critical mass in a fusion bomb, and the force of the explosion is limited only by the quantity of reactants present. Thermonuclear bombs are described as being cleaner than atomic bombs because the only radioactive isotopes they produce are tritium, which is a weak /S-particle emitter (ti = 12.5 yr), and the products of the fission starter. Their damaging effects on the environment can be aggravated, however, by incorporating in the construction some nonfissionable material such as cobalt. Upon bombardment by neutrons, cobalt-59 is converted to cobalt-60, which is a very strong 7-ray emitter with a half-life of 5.2 yr. The presence of radioactive cobalt isotopes in the debris or fallout from a thermonuclear explosion would be fatal to those who survived the initial blast. 

An important example of pressure diffusion (1) is the current worldwide competition to perfect a low-cost gas centrifuge capable of industrial-scale separation of the and U, gaseous hexafluoride isotopes. To date, atomic bomb and atomic power self-sufficiency has been limited to major powers since the underdeveloped countries have neither the money nor an industrial base to build the huge multi-billion dollar gaseous diffusion (2) plants currently required for uranium enrichment. In these plants, typified by the U.S. Oak Ridge Operation, and Up6 are separated by forcing a gaseous mixture of the... 

Roosevelt responded two days later I think the whole thing should be pushed not only in regard to development, but also with due regard to time. This is very much of the essence. Time, not money, was becoming the limiting factor in atomic bomb development. 

But Teller had received no concomitant administrative appointment that April, and the omission aggrieved him. He was qualified to lead the Theoretical Division Oppenheimer appointed Hans Bethe instead. He was qualified to lead a division devoted to work toward a thermonuclear fusion weapon, a Super, but no such division was established. The laboratory had decided at its opening conference, and the Lewis committee had affirmed in May, that thermonuclear research should be restricted largely to theoretical studies and held to distant second priority behind fission an atomic bomb, since it would trigger any thermonuclear arrangement, necessarily came first there was a war on and manpower was limited. 

Stimson abhorred bombing cities. As he wrote in his third-person memoir after the war, for thirty years Stimson had been a champion of international law and morality. As soldier and Cabinet officer he had repeatedly argued that war itself must be restrained within the bounds of humanity.. .. Perhaps, as he later said, he was misled by the constant talk of precision bombing, but he had believed that even air power could be limited in its use by the old concept of legitimate military targets. Firebombing was a kind of total war he had always hated. He seems to have conceived the idea that even the atomic bomb could be somehow humanely applied, as he discussed with Truman on May 16 ... 

The development of atomic power will provide the nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale. 

Culture School teacher Herbert Smith, the confessor of his youth they are heavy on us today, when the future, which has so many elements of high promise, is yet only a stone s throw from despair. To Haakon Chevalier, his friend at Berkeley in Depression days, Oppenheimer repeated that the circumstances are heavy with misgiving, and far, far more difficult than they should be, had we power to remake the world to be as we think it. Lawrence could muster only limited patience for Oppenheimer s remorse. He thought the atomic bomb a terrible swift sword that would end the war and might succeed in ending all wars. He also seems to have claimed it as his own. In one newspaper interview out of many published the day after Hiroshima, notes Stanislaw Ulam mischievously, E. O. Lawrence modestly admitted, according to the interviewer, that he more than anyone else was responsible for the atomic bomb. ... 

Case Summary, Treatment and Disposition to Glen Line, Limited. Re Captain s Steward Ho Lung Yue, aboard MV Glenarm. Head, neck, chest steel fragment wounds incurred in air attack at sea. 17 July 1950, Nagasaki Harbor. Signed, J. Yamazaki, M.D., Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. 

Oughterson, Ashley W, George V. LeRoy, Averil A. Liebow, E. Cuyler Hammond, Henry L. Barnett, Jack D. Rosenbaum, and B. Aubrey Schneider. Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan, 6 vols. Vol. 6 declassified on December 28,1954. Washington, DC. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1951. Limited distribution. 

During spontaneous nuclear fission reactions, heavy nuclei split when bombarded by neutrons, and release large amounts of energy. This process was used to produce two atomic bombs whose use ended World War II. A second energy-releasing nuclear process, fusion, is the basis for today s hydrogen bombs. Nuclear fission is in limited use as a source of electrical power however, this use is controversial. Nuclear fusion has not yet proved feasible as a controlled source of power, but research toward this end continues. 

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