NUCLEAR INSANITY & THE LAST DAYS OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY? ~ LLAW
Dec 10, 2024
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.”
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