NationStates Jolt Archive

2200 Zulu
Unidentified Island in Dolms Archipelago

"Captain, the last freighter has arrived, and we've been Telexed our orders for Operation: Rival Sun."

"Proceed as ordered. Offload any remaining parts of the device from the transports and proceed to assembly station."

"Time Zero, sir?"

"0200 hours. Ground Zero is a mile north of here."

_____________________________________________________________

Capital of Lorraine
0000 Zulu

The Chairman of the Kelans Bureau of Atomics was a nerve-wracked man. Even with the 'event' two hours away, he couldn't help but be shaky. He'd based most of his career around this new, revolutionary weapon, around the theories involved in its operation. Would it even work? If it was a fizzle, he'd be the laughingstock of the government for suggesting such a ludicrous and expensive operation.

The plan, he thought at first, had to be flawless. An eight-stage nuclear device! The first true step in inventing a "pure" fusion bomb, one requiring no fission trigger whatsoever, one which could have a yield so low it couldn't be distinguished from a large conventional explosion, emitting virtually nil in the way of fatal radiation. That same "pure" fusion bomb concept could also be used to produce weapons with yields approaching that of the Rival Sun device, now being prepared for its detonation.

Public Statement and Notice to Mariners

In approximately two hours, the Federation of Kelanis will carry out a revolutionary eight-stage nuclear test. Located in the Dolms Archipelago 257 kilometers away from Kelanis's north coast, this test (which will be a fission-fusion-fusion-fusion-fusion-fusion-fusion type) is expected to have a yield approaching 200 megatons.

A suspended air burst from a concrete tower 100 feet tall is planned.

The Kelanis Naval Bureau has issued flash and tsunami warnings for an area 200 kilometers around the archipelago. Fishermen, private boats, and commercial ships are urged to avoid the archipelago completely. The resulting tidal wave from the explosion is expected to raise tides temporarily all along Kelanis's north coast, and may exceed 200 feet in height around Ground Zero. This is a very dangerous situation.

Do not look at the test if it is visible to you. Leave the area if you can see the explosion clearly.

This test is part of research into pure fusion weapons, which will be much cleaner than regular multi-stage thermonuclear weapons. With eight stages, this blast is expected to reach a maximum yield approximately four times that of Tsar Bomba's calculated true yield, and double that of the weapon's intended maximum yield.

There is a good chance of failure, this being an extremely large and complex device. However, we will simply postpone the test while repairs are made.

We also send this message to all undesirables who would consider stealing the bomb:
The bomb site is fully defended (and will be up to 15 minutes prior to the detonation, which will be Evacuation Time.) The waters around Dolms are also festooned with one of the largest magnetic influence / moored contact mine field ever laid around an island body. Air defenses will be tight; aircraft approaching the site will be shot down without warning.

Furthermore, please note that a bomb such as this is militarily useless. Not only did it have to be transported in 40 separate pieces by 40 separate freighters, it is much too cost-inefficient and sizeable for an air-drop. Few military aircraft in the world today could even fit this behemoth.

--END NOTICE TO MARINERS--

0150 Zulu

"T-minus five minutes."

The Captain, flying overhead in the ACS-9 Gunrunner mobile command aircraft, gave the orders to the bomb operator, who was issuing the setup commands to the bomb itself via a radio transmission system.

"Engage arming sequence. All observers please prepare your goggles. Photographers stand by."

The blast-documentation instruments around Ground Zero would have only a few seconds to transmit their results before they were obliterated.

"Now at T-minus sixty seconds!"

"Sound Code Red. All crew brace for impact!"

The eerie electronic computer voice rang through the cabin again:
"T-minus five... four... three... two... one..."

Zero.

The bomb operator stabbed his finger on the big red EXECUTE button, clasped his hands over his head, and prayed...

_____________________________________________________________

Ground Zero

Inside the bomb casing, things started to happen instantly. High-voltage capacitors outside the inner ring of the fission trigger discharged into a complex series of xenon-gas driven timer switches. These switches separated the 25 capacitor discharges into 100 equal bursts of electricity. Each was released at the exact same microsecond as the rest, travelling down its thin copper wire into the RDX explosive blocks surrounding the core.

The front end of the bomb blew off in a spectacular explosion as all 100 blocks ignited simultaneously. Inside the reaction pit, the neutron source-strontium- lost its cover shield to the explosion, bombarding the contents within with neutrons.

The blast front created by the explosives expanded radially, but their shaped charges pushed mainly inward. For a split second, the tennis ball sized sphere of uranium-235 was compressed into a pellet the size of a golf ball. The uranium lost about 3/4 of its surface area in the compression.

Neutrons from the strontium started pouring into the uranium sphere. With so little surface area and the atoms so tightly compressed, odds were that some of the neutrons would strike a target...

And strike they did. A free neutron squarely hit a U235 nucleus. The U235 promptly gave up several free neutrons, and that was it- the fission process had begun.

The now-glowing uranium sphere expanded exponentially, giving off an immense wave of heat and light along with deadly radiation as it gave up its energy to form the initial fireball.

But the bomb wasn't done yet.

The heat from the fission explosion was transferred through the blast shield through several aluminum-coated "straws", which lasted just long enough for the million-degree temperatures of fission to leak into the first fusion stage before the blast shield was blown asunder and the straws flashed to plasma.

The immense heat immediately ignited explosive charges around the outer core of the first stage, sending a plutonium wedge hammering into the core itself to create a critical-mass sphere around the fusion products themselves, deuterium and tritium. The next series of explosive blocks went off, crushing the plutonium around the deuterium and tritium. The plutonium went supercritical as it was exposed to free neutrons from the still-ongoing fission trigger reaction.

As the plutonium started its own fission reaction, temperatures began to rise.

Helium was created as billions of deuterium and tritium atoms were smashed together by trillions of pounds of force and millions of degrees of heat.

The trigger fission reaction was still expanding, but beginning to slacken when the first fusion stage completed. The first two stages alone produced upwards of 15 megatons of force. The remaining five fusion stages all ignited without a hitch.

The blast-instrumentation instruments performed beautifully, transmitting the final statistics from the test:

Estimated Yield: 187.32 megatons
Maximum recorded temperature: 32 million degrees Centigrade
Maximum Overpressure: Approximately 12,000 PSI
Explosion Efficiency: Estimated at 97.62% (still under investigation)

Based on the results of the test, Kelanis has decided to push ahead with its "pure" fusion weapon system, as well as an advanced fusion power generation system.

Bump for ego!