natei@sco.COM (Nathaniel Ingersoll) (11/06/90)
From: Nathaniel Ingersoll <natei@sco.COM>
In article <1990Nov4.210816.4716@cbnews.att.com>, "Christian M. Restifo" writes:
:
:As for the Neutron bomb, all I know is that it's used to radiate the
:hell out of your target. While the blast effects (destruction of
:buildings, etc.) is considerably less than that of an H-bomb, the weapon
:actually spews out a tremendous amount of radiation, killing every
:living thing. (I've heard that the Neutron bomb was originally designed
:to be used in the Middle East on the oil fields....)
Neutron bombs are basically normal fission weapons with the U-238 jacket
removed, to let the neutrons from the fission reaction go out and irradiate
other stuff besides the U-238.
In the case of a normal fission weapon, the primary idea of the bomb is to
cause blast (overpressure) and heat destruction, so the bombs were designed
not to send their immense numbers of neutrons out; so a jacket of U-238 was
put around the entire thing to absorb the neutrons (of course, the U-238 gets
vaporized just barely after it absorbs all of the neutrons, but the job was
done). Later someone realized what all of those neutrons could do to people,
and save all the good stuff (tanks, buildings, whatever), and so the neutron
bomb was born. I believe that a good sized neutron bomb has an explosive
yield on the order of a couple of kilotons (2-3 KT), as compared to 15 or 20KT
for Fat Man and Little Boy.