Talk:B53 nuclear bomb

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[edit] Dirty and clean

The article states:

"Two variants were made: the B53-Y1, a dirty weapon using a U-238-encased secondary, and the B53-Y2 "clean" version with a non-fissile (lead or tungsten) secondary casing. Explosive yield was nine megatons."

But, surely these two versions had very different yields? I would expect hte dirty version to be more than twice the power of the clear version.--ManInStone 14:31, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question about lens that is not "insensitive"

I have a question about this sentence:

The explosive "lens" is a mixture of RDX and TNT, which is not insensitive.

I am familiar with the concept of an implosion lens, meaning the variation in the explosive surrounding an implosion device that shapes the inward shock wave into a perfect sphere. Critical mass is achieved by crushing the fissile material equally from all directions. But what does it mean to say that the lens is "not sensitive"? 72.154.165.227 (talk) 01:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not insensitive, not "not sensitive". Insensitive refers to the explosive's sensitivity to shock and fire. Insensitive high explosives - IHE (basically, only those which are based on TATB (triamino trinitro benzine) are extremely resistant to detonation on impact or in fires or so forth. If you're transporting IHE and there's an accident / fire / crash, it's essentially guaranteed not to detonate (though it may burn if it's in a fire).

There's a nuclear weapons safety regulation that says that nuclear weapons using only IHE for explosive charges may be transported by air routinely. Those with normal high explosives (those older than 1970-ish) can't be air transported without specific high level approval, as they could possibly detonate the explosive assembly in a crash. Not with the proper timing and multi-point initiation to detonate the weapon - you'd get a few tens of pounds of high explosive blowing a few pounds or ten pounds of plutonium out all over the landscape. But that's bad enough that it's generally strongly avoided.

Also, some older weapons weren't completely one point safe. Under some circumstances, an accidental explosion starting somewhere in the explosives could cause the weapon to generate a small nuclear explosion, with yield ranging from a fraction of a pound of TNT equivalent (large neutron burst, but not much energy added) to a few or ten tons of TNT equivalent (very large neutron / gamma burst, and very significant explosion). All non one point safe weapons should have long ago been out of US inventory.

The B-53 is described as one-point safe but not using IHE, so it is not as safe as more modern weapons. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 08:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)