Nuclear Bomb: What Really Happens

By Philip Cheung, 09 Feb 17:26

Ever wondered what makes a nuclear bomb so destructive? How about what would happened if there was a massive nuclear fallout where you live? The componenets of this powerful biological weapon are quite simple to comprehend once the facts have been laid out in front of us.

Nuclear weapons, like conventional bombs, are designed to cause damage through an explosion, i.e. the release of a large amount of energy in a short period of time. In conventional bombs the explosion is created by a chemical reaction, which involves the rearrangement of atoms to form new molecules. The amount of energy released is proportional to the binding energies of the molecules. In nuclear weapons the explosion is created by changing the atoms themselves - they are either split or fused to create new atoms.

The binding energies within atoms are many magnitudes of order greater than the binding energies of molecules. The amount of energy available within an atom is given by Einstein's famous formula E=MC2, where E = energy, M = the mass and C = the speed of light. Thus the energy available equals the mass multiplied by 9,000,000,000,000,000,000. As a result, a nuclear bomb using a kilogram of plutonium could have the same explosive force of approximately 15 million kilograms of TNT.

There are two main types of nuclear weapons:
atom bombs which use fission as the main reaction, i.e. the atoms are split;
hydrogen bombs which use fusion as the main reaction, i.e. the atoms are fused together.

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Tags: Nuclear, Nuke, Bomb, War, Iraq