North Carolina nearly nuked.

@oralloy,

more likely we will change the rules every 4 or 8 years, Now that American presidents have sat at the feet of Putin and decided that they are free to be dictators, bypassing The other two alleged branches of government. The will of the people? Consent of the governed? HAHAHAHAHA. THAT stuff is strictly for the propaganda programs used to keep the seething masses docile.

0 Replies

Boy, you got that one backwards. You did notice, didn't you, Obama announcing he'd take the case for Syria to Congress, or did you miss that? And it's more Putin kneeling to Obama, since Putin put pressure on Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons (which Assad is dutifully doing), since Assad is Russia's client and Putin didn't want Syria bombed, so he did what Obama wanted.

0 Replies

@oralloy,

Quote:

Remember we're talking about a weapon designed and built in the 1950s here. Modern insensitive high explosives were a ways into the future yet.

Hate to disagree with you but off hand I think they have such explosives dating back to world war 2 even if not in common usage at that time.

Needed to look it up to be sure see below.

Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_explosive

One of the simplest plastic explosives was Nobel's Explosive No. 808, also known as Nobel 808 (often just called Explosive 808 in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War), developed by the British company Nobel Chemicals Ltd well before World War II. It had the appearance of green plasticine with a distinctive smell of almonds. During World War II it was extensively used by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) for sabotage missions. It is also the explosive used in HESH anti-tank shells. Captured SOE-supplied Nobel 808 was the explosive used in the failed 20 July plot assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1944.[citation needed]

During and after World War II a number of new RDX-based explosives were developed, including Compositions C, C2, and eventually C3. Together with RDX these incorporate various plasticisers to decrease sensitivity and make the composition plastic. The origin of the obsolete term plastique dates back to the Nobel 808 explosive introduced to the U.S. by the British in 1940. The samples of explosive brought to the U.S. by the Tizard Mission had already been packaged by the SOE ready for dropping to the French Resistance and were therefore labelled in French, as Explosif Plastique. It is still referred to by this name in France and also by some Americans.

C3 was effective but proved to be too brittle in cold weather. In the 1960s it was replaced by C-4, also using RDX but with polyisobutylene and di(2-ethylhexyl)sebacate as the binder and plasticizer.[citation needed]

List of plas

1 Reply

@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

Hate to disagree with you but off hand I think they have such explosives dating back to world war 2 even if not in common usage at that time.
Needed to look it up to be sure see below.

"Plastic explosive" and "modern insensitive explosive" are two very different terms.

It is possible for a plastic explosive to also fit the standards for insensitive explosive, but that does not mean all plastic explosives do.

Also, I would be very surprised if plastic explosives were ever used in a nuclear weapon.

---

I've done a bit more reading about this event, and see I've made a mistake in my understanding of the event. It looks like it was a close call. However, I'll have to wait 'til I have more time to type up a post before I address it.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

non sensitive explosives are fairly recent (30 yers or so) and probably would NEVER be used for military . (Im not including a MOAB cause that's mostly gas and air). But stuff like Nitromethane and sensitizers, FIXOR, and ANFO are so safe that it takes you an hour of pumping or "baking"to even get em set up.
We use ANFO and make a s;lurry out of ammonium nitrate and number 2 fuel oil. It needs a space of containment, a sensitizer and a detonator. Youd never make a wepon out of this ****. We blast well casings and quarry faces with this stuff and it tqkes us 2,3 days to get all the shot holes filled an armed with time delay cps and sensitiers .

____________________

The Sandia guys sounded like they knew what they were tlking bout when they were saying that this nuke accident was really a close call.

4 Replies

@farmerman,

Is suppose You could use Tannerite as a weapon but its so damn weak that gun nuts use it to blow up trgets with their high velocity rounds. Its a nitrate and aluminum powder charge that really needs a smak to set off.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

You don't use perf guns and explosive tubing cutters? They even make acid based tubing cutters if you really need a clean cut.

1 Reply

@roger,

I misspoke, we don't blst the casings but the wells that are shot holes. We remove any casing before the slurry.

I ve spent the last 35 years neverhaving the pleasure to deal with perforating casings ( I still get roaring headaches from post blast smells . Its often bad enough in a face blast to have me get sick as a dog for a day or so. (That was one of the ways they discovered that nitro would ease angina)

I often speck out perfing but last time I stood around to log I was in my 30's. That's for the new kids. There aint enough Tylenol for me after a blast (unless I wear a face mask (which I did once and , of course the drillers called me a pussy).

1 Reply

@farmerman,

I got a funny feeling we are talking about two different things that happen to have the same or similar names.

1 Reply

@roger,

maybe. Are you talking quarrying or oil drilling? Im talking quarrying

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Drilling. The perf allows the oil and gas into the casing. Any blasting fumes are a long ways down the hole, even in the San Juan Basin.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_conventional_explosives_are_used_to_trigger_a_nuclear_weapon

For plutonium fueled atomic bombs high explosives must be used to assemble a critical mass without a fizzle. The first such bombs used Composition B (a predecessor of modern C-4) and Baritol. Modern bombs use shock and fire resistant plastic bonded explosives.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Bill wrote,

Quote:

Now add in a few safety devices that common sense would call for and a plane breaking up and the bombs falling free to the ground should be no danger to anyone unless the few thousand pounds bomb happen to land on your head.

You have the right idea; there are safeguards that requires human input in addition to the physical constraints. Most importantly, the chance of a nuclear explosion is almost impossible without the proper preparation.

I'll also add that even back in the late fifties, there was common knowledge that most universities with physics courses could figure out how to make an a-bomb.

What we couldn't talk about when I was in the service, they now display some nukes at museums.

0 Replies

@roger,

Im so glad the stuff I work with at depth uses high pressure water and sand and not xplosives.
slant drilling and fracking has changed everything for my outlook and my "condition"

0 Replies

This thread has gotten boring . . . somebody send me a PM if they nuke the tarheels.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

why would you wanna nuke a beautiful state like NC, Now _ _ _ _ _ _ (insert nukeable state here)_ _ _ _ _ _ that's another story

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Some parts are pretty . . . which is probably true of all the states . . .

0 Replies

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

non sensitive explosives are fairly recent (30 yers or so) and probably would NEVER be used for military .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TATB

farmerman wrote:

The Sandia guys sounded like they knew what they were tlking bout when they were saying that this nuke accident was really a close call.

Probably something about like Russian roulette odds of the bomb going off, IMO.

I've been trying to find the fission fraction for the device, but what should be a readily available piece of information keeps eluding me.

I'll guesstimate though that about 2.5 megatons of its yield came from fission.

A 4 megaton groundburst with 2.5 megatons from fission would have left a nasty fallout plume.

I looked up the accident, and I actually have a picture of the bomb. I'll try to upload it when I get a chance. First though I'm going to track down that data on the bomb's fission fraction.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Quote:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_conventional_explosives_are_used_to_trigger_a_nuclear_weapon

For plutonium fueled atomic bombs high explosives must be used to assemble a critical mass without a fizzle. The first such bombs used Composition B (a predecessor of modern C-4) and Baritol. Modern bombs use shock and fire resistant plastic bonded explosives.

That article is wildly inaccurate. C-4 refers to a type of Composition C, which is RDX mixed with motor oil.

Composition B is a completely different type of compound: RDX mixed with TNT. It retains the same sort of melt-castable properties that straight TNT possesses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_B
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_C

The predecessors of C-4 were: C-3, C-2, and C-1

It's true though that Composition B was used in the early implosion bombs.

0 Replies

@oralloy,

oralloy wrote:

I've been trying to find the fission fraction for the device, but what should be a readily available piece of information keeps eluding me.

Exactly 50/50. That's cleaner than I'd expected.

3.8 megatons: 1.9 from fusion and 1.9 from fission.

Still would have left a really nasty fallout plume though.

oralloy wrote:

I looked up the accident, and I actually have a picture of the bomb. I'll try to upload it when I get a chance.

Uploaded:
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4762/aua.png

Wikipedia has a shot of the bomb too, from a different angle:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Goldsboro_Mk_39_Bomb_1.jpeg

0 Replies

North Carolina nearly nuked.

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know