'Clean' nukes and the nature of Honorverse sidewalls

[18-Till-I-Die]

Beacuse i didnt want to make to seperate posts and spam, i decided to ask two questions here.

Firstly, is it possible to build a 'cean' nuclear weapon, i.e a nuclear weapon that generates little or no radiation, and could such a weapon be into the gigatons, and any theories would be greatly appreciated.

Second question is, what would be a more realistic form of gravity sheild? I was thinking something like a compact form of Honorverse sidewalls, only hull conformal, but i was wondering if the description given for how they operate is at all technically feasible.

Again, any help would be appreciated.

[Xon]

Firstly, is it possible to build a 'cean' nuclear weapon, i.e a nuclear weapon that generates little or no radiation, and could such a weapon be into the gigatons, and any theories would be greatly appreciated.

An 'unclean' nuke is a nuclear device which leaves radioactive material scattered around. This typically means it isnt highly efficient because there is unreacted nuclear material left over.

High efficiency nukes tend to be very clean, unless they are 'salted'.

Matter/anti-matter reactions are also very clean, as they dont leave the heavier radioactive isotopes around, just generally dump a buttload of gamma radiation.

Second question is, what would be a more realistic form of gravity sheild? I was thinking something like a compact form of Honorverse sidewalls, only hull conformal, but i was wondering if the description given for how they operate is at all technically feasible.

Not even close to realistic nor technically feasible baring some wierd technobabble.

HHverse isnt hard sci-fi by any stretch of the imagination.

[18-Till-I-Die]

An 'unclean' nuke is a nuclear device which leaves radioactive material scattered around. This typically means it isnt highly efficient because there is unreacted nuclear material left over.

High efficiency nukes tend to be very clean, unless they are 'salted'.

Matter/anti-matter reactions are also very clean, as they dont leave the heavier radioactive isotopes around, just generally dump a buttload of gamma radiation.

Well, what i was thinking of would be a type of nuclear weapon, which creates almost no radiation, or at least not enough to be harmful to anything, but retains a similar destructive effect to a normal nuke. Is that possible or am i dreaming?

Not even close to realistic nor technically feasible baring some wierd technobabble.

HHverse isnt hard sci-fi by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh, well see, i didnt know that Well i knew the Webber was known to technobable, but it seemed like the sidewalls were possible. Well, does anyone knwo of any strong, non-technobable gravity shields then?

[Mr. Sinister]

Oh, well see, i didnt know that Well i knew the Webber was known to technobable, but it seemed like the sidewalls were possible. Well, does anyone knwo of any strong, non-technobable gravity shields then?

There is pretty much no sci-fi shield that can exist without some magic-tech (especially gravitic-based). In fact, once you start talking about shields in the traditional sci-fi sense, your throwing any attempt to conform to 'hard science' right out the window.

Might as well call it an 'exotic field' and be done with it, because thats what it basically is.

[HemlockGrey]

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe. Why would it ever replace armor?

[Mr. Sinister]

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe. Why would it ever replace armor?

I wanted to include that in my response but it slipped my mind. If you absolutaly have to explain your tech, then electromagnetism is the way to go. There's a paragraph in the "Brain Bugs" section of the main site that explains it better.

[Stormbringer]

HHverse isnt hard sci-fi by any stretch of the imagination.

It's definitely not hard science. But at least it's consistant and doesn't spew technobabble all over the place.

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe. Why would it ever replace armor?

Technobabble.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe...again, something i didnt know, i might get a small science lesson out of this .

Ok, so forget gravity. Mind you i'm not writing hard sci-fi though, by any stretch of the imgination. It's just that i suck at science, and i dont want to write something that sounds stupid in hindsight, that and i like to be as blunt as possible in explaining tech, as not to be too longwinded.

How strong would a plasma shield be? Could it stand up to multi-gigaton weaponry, for example? And what would be the simplest, explanation?

[Seggybop]

Well, what i was thinking of would be a type of nuclear weapon, which creates almost no radiation, or at least not enough to be harmful to anything, but retains a similar destructive effect to a normal nuke. Is that possible or am i dreaming?

A powerful nuke will have blast/heat effects extending far beyond the range where the immediate radiation is a serious concern. If the bomb is also as efficient as possible, it shouldn't leave any long term contaminants either.

[Xon]

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe. Why would it ever replace armor?

I wanted to include that in my response but it slipped my mind. If you absolutaly have to explain your tech, then electromagnetism is the way to go. There's a paragraph in the "Brain Bugs" section of the main site that explains it better.

Better yet, use the 'superforce' to describe it

Then it doesnt matter if it requires electromagnetism/electrogravity or alternative univercal constants, it describes them all.

[Arrow]

Beacuse i didnt want to make to seperate posts and spam, i decided to ask two questions here.

Firstly, is it possible to build a 'cean' nuclear weapon, i.e a nuclear weapon that generates little or no radiation, and could such a weapon be into the gigatons, and any theories would be greatly appreciated.

You might want to try searching SLAM and the archives for nuke threads. Assuming my memory is functioning, I think it was said that modern nukes (discounting 'dial-a-yeild' bombs) are very clean, leaving behind very little radioactive material when air-bursted. Ground burst is dirty, as it causes radioactive decay in the ground itself. 'Dial-a-yeild' weapons are dirty when not at full yeild, since they don't use up all of their fissible material. (Disclaimer: my physics might be wrong on this. I'm sure someone will tell me if I am.)

Second question is, what would be a more realistic form of gravity sheild? I was thinking something like a compact form of Honorverse sidewalls, only hull conformal, but i was wondering if the description given for how they operate is at all technically feasible.

Again, any help would be appreciated.

I'd suggest armor that has the ability to rapidily dump energy (like using a laser on a diamond) and withstand kinetic weapons. While still unrealistic, especially against multi-gigaton weapons, it is much more realistic that a shielding field, especially a gravity based one.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

You don't need to really figure out how something fuctions or the science behind it unless you have to, which you shouldn't have to.

[Darth Wong]

High-yield nukes are very clean, but modern nukes aren't that high-yield. Anyway, even a totally "clean" weapon would still produce short-term radioactivity; it just wouldn't produce long-term radioactive fallout. High-intensity radiation will tend to produce a lot of short-lived environmental radioisotopes.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Ok, that you all, this simplifies things for me a great deal

But two questions: why arent modern nukes high-yeld. And, more so, is there a definite mininal size one could squeeze a 300gt nuke into, i.e could one be fit into something the size of a Tomahawk missile?

I ask this cause the 'clean' nukes (err...actually, i call them 'atomics' for purely aesthetic purposes) in the story are about the size of a modern cruise missile, but have multi-gigaton yelds.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

We don't use high-yield nukes because they're very wasteful.

Second question: no. The bigger the yield, the bigger the bomb.

[Elheru Aran]

But two questions: why arent modern nukes high-yeld. And, more so, is there a definite mininal size one could squeeze a 300gt nuke into, i.e could one be fit into something the size of a Tomahawk missile?

Modern nukes aren't high-yield because that would be ineffective-- after the fireball and the blast, all you have is radiation, which is pretty much long-term in its effects. IIRC, most modern nukes are more tactical than strategic weapons.

As for the Tomhawk missiles, there actually were Tomhawks equipped with nukes, but they were megaton-range... low-end at that. Gigaton-range weapons were mostly bombs or very large missile warheads like ICBM's.

All that is off the top of my head-- I'm no scientist and can hardly make accurate claims (being merely a lowly freshman in college), but it sounds about right to me. Will gladly accept any corrections...

[18-Till-I-Die]

So you couldnt fit a 300gt warhead onto a tomahawk sized missile ? I was hoping it was possible, since i wanted to make the msisiles as small as possible (to minimize space taken up by the magazines and all).

How big would a 300gt atomic (nuke) have to be then, and could the warhead be 'compressed' somehow?

[Seggybop]

A gigaton-range nuke would be psychotically large. The 100MT Tsar Bomba (largest bomb constructed) was as big as a small house. 300GT is 3000x stronger than that, with a proportional increase in mass. X_X

The only way you can get a gigantic explosion with much less volume is antimatter. 1kg of antimatter reacting with 1kg of normal matter will explode with 44MT of energy. Tomahawk cruise missiles should be able to carry enough antimatter for GT-range explosions, but containment systems would also be needed so the antimatter doesn't react prematurely. Of course, if you use antimatter it's not really a nuke anymore.

[Darth Wong]

IIRC, a 1 megaton bomb is roughly 1 ton. This does not bode well for a warhead which is 300,000 times more powerful and must fit into a smaller space.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Well, the big problem is, i was trying to figure out a way that a ship could carry hundreds of thousand sof such misisles (more on the larger ships), as i pictured them being used in thousand-missile volleys at a time.

Is there some other way to fit a lot of firepower into a cruise missile sized device, beisdes antimater? Perhaps some kind of ultra-high explosive? Or would that be too far fetched, i was trying to veer away from wankery.

Or i could just upscale the size of teh ships.

[The Kernel]

IIRC, a 1 megaton bomb is roughly 1 ton. This does not bode well for a warhead which is 300,000 times more powerful and must fit into a smaller space.

Is there any cocievable headroom for improving fusion bomb efficiency? I know we are limited by reactants, but how much of a modern fusion bomb is just the fusion reactants (since it is concievable I'm told to have a pure fusion bomb).

[Lord of the Farce]

Using matter/anti-matter, you would be required to provide just approximately 70 kilograms of anti-matter and equal amount of matter per warhead. Of course, this is assuming about 100% efficiency, and completely ignores the need for containment.

[Sokar]

Well, the big problem is, i was trying to figure out a way that a ship could carry hundreds of thousand sof such misisles (more on the larger ships), as i pictured them being used in thousand-missile volleys at a time.

Is there some other way to fit a lot of firepower into a cruise missile sized device, beisdes antimater? Perhaps some kind of ultra-high explosive? Or would that be too far fetched, i was trying to veer away from wankery.

Or i could just upscale the size of teh ships.

Any solution to increasing the yeilds, while still keeping the missiles down to Tomahawk scale is going to require some techno-wankery or pseudo-sci. Current generation hard science explosives are simply to mass intensive to get you into the gigaton range your looking for. M/AM warheads can do it easily, but require advanced, micro scaled storage and containment systems in order to work as a military weapon.

Remeber, your writing sci-fi, a bit of techno-wizardry is ok , as long as you take a reasonably likely path to explain your tech , you'll do just fine.

[Arrow]

An alternative to antimatter is some other method to convert 100% of your warhead's mass into energy. Blackholes are able to this, by making matter 'forget' its matter (to be extremely simplistic). This at least gets you around antimatter containment.

[Arrow]

Actually, you don't even need to convert 100% of your mass, just a significant portion. But this does increase bomb size.