[BC] miswiring adventures

[PeterH]

On Feb 3, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Chuck Lakaytis wrote:

> And if you want the ultimate OOOPS read Richard Rhodes The Making  
> of the
> Atomic Bomb.  The plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki was being prepped in
> the assembly hanger.  There was a very complicated wiring harness used
> to attach all the explosive charges of the symmetrical exploders.
> Someone noticed that the male and female connectors were at the wrong
> end of the cable!  The cable was routed in such a way that it would  
> have
> taken at least a day to remove and rerun the cable.  So one of the
> physicists along with an enlisted tech, against regulations  (NO  
> HEAT NO
> OPEN FLAMES) said a sign in the room, unsoldered the connectors and  
> then
> resoldered them to the correct ends of the cable.
>

This was a *32-Point* ignition system, but employed 64 detonators  
just to make absolutely sure the ignition was effected within the  
very tight tolerances required for a truly symmetrical implosion,  
plus or minus several nanoseconds.

Later, a *96-Point* ignition system was tried, and it, too worked,  
but it required 192 detonators, however it reduced the requirement  
for a complicated inertial containment system, AKA a tamper/pusher.

Obviously, if more could be better, then, just perhaps, less could be  
more!

The ultimate implementation was a *2-point* ignition system, the so- 
called *Swan* ignition system.

*Swan*, 1956, and virtually all succeeding United States designs, was  
perhaps the most complicated design of all.

Not only was the entire ignition process performed using only two  
*points*, *Swan* was also *single-point safe* system, meaning if a  
single point was ignited, then the device was rendered safe as the  
plutonium *pit* would, thereby, be divided into two roughly equal- 
sized masses, and as these were de-facto sub-critical, there would be  
no nuclear yield at all.

We have used *Swan* or a *Swan derivative* ever since.

*Swan* is perhaps the most complicated hydrodynamic system yet  
devised by Man.

However, Swan was not described by Rhodes, who retained some rather  
simplistic descriptions of all the devices which he described. In  
both books, the second of which is a less convincing read.

> By the way that book is a wonderful read.

The first Rhodes book was indeed a great read, and it even had a very  
competently done explanation of a thermonuclear bomb, AKA *Hydrogen  
Bomb*.

The precise mechanism of a thermonuclear bomb has only recently come  
to light.

Even Teller got it wrong. Completely wrong.

The UC researchers thought the thermonuclear would yield X, but it  
actually yielded more than 2X.

They did not account for the remote possibility, the VERY remote  
possibility, that the supposedly stable Li-D could be converted, in- 
situ, to Li-T.

What resulted, effectively, was a run-away explosion, which yielded  
about 15 MT, nearly three times the calculated yield of 5 MT.

This proved to be the most powerful explosion ever achieved by the  
United States.