Questions tagged [nuclear]
For questions about atomic nuclear phenomena and their effects on the world. For heat and power generation applications of nuclear phenomena, use [nuclear-power]. For weapons relying on nuclear phenomena, consider [nuclear weapons] and [weapon-mass-destruction]. Compare [radioactivity], [weak-force] and [strong-force].
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Would increasing the stability of nuclei have other side effects than just fission not happening?
I'm writing a short story where humanity lives in a section of the universe that's causing the nuclei to be unstable.
To explain what I mean, we here have hydrogen, deuterium and tritium where ...
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What would happen to nuclear missiles left to rot post-apocalypse? [duplicate]
A sudden cataclysm takes place. The human race is all but wiped away. And the nukes in their bunkers and silos are left to rot for 800 years before anyone finds a record of them. What has happened to ...
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Industrial scale Tritium production from Helium3?
Currently Tritium is produced by neutron bombardment of Lithium. I was looking into alternatives and learned that Helium3 has a rather large cross section for reacting with thermal neutrons. From what ...
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Is there a metric for how far underground a nuclear bomb needs to be to safely be tested?
I'm running a one-shot cold war campaign where the PCs are going to sabotage a prototype Soviet giga-ton bomb. Realistically, how far underground would a giga-ton bomb have to be buried to be safely ...
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Unforeseen Consequences of Limiting Nuclear Fission
From my understanding nuclear fission takes place in two different scenarios and correlates with the speed of a neutron. In terms of material, we have fissionable material which undergo nuclear ...
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Could you freeze a nuclear explosion [closed]
The character who I'm talking about is faced with certain death and has to freeze a nuclear exposition that's coming right at him, would this work, and how would it. This character has ice-based ...
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How weight and volume-efficient can you make a high-yield nuclear weapon for setting off a volcano?
Let's say that we need a nuke that can fit into a very small space while also providing a very large boom.
Now, the US's B-41 nuclear bomb was quite mass-efficient indeed; it put out 22 petajoules, or ...
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With modern-day/near-future (i.e. potentially realizable within 20 years) technology, can a nuclear reactor with these characteristics be built?
I'm writing about a nuclear-powered tank. Yes, I know about what the problems associated with it are. No, the people in the setting don't care about radioactive contamination of their environment, or ...
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How to explore a radioactive wasteland with mostly low tech equipment? [closed]
I'm writing a story based on people trapped in a city which has had multiple nuclear bombs set off in it, and so has some very irradiated reason. The people in it have slightly more advanced than ...
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Can we fulfill the world electricity production by nuclear power? [closed]
Nuclear energy is a form of energy released from the nucleus, the core of atoms, made up of protons and neutrons. In today's world has 450 commercial nuclear power reactors operable in 30 countries.
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Why do the nations in my world use tactical nuclear weapons but not strategic ones while still having both?
Exactly what it says on the tin: why do the nuclear bomb-having nations in my world use tactical nuclear weapons but not strategic ones while still having both?
They're not launching ICBMs at one ...
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Could a neutron-slowing field render neutron-induced nuclear fission weapons and reactors unusable?
Let's say that, for some reason, producing a certain type of field causes all free neutrons with a kinetic energy greater than 100 kEV to spontaneously emit visible-spectrum photons and lose the ...
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How far would radiation from an exclusion zone spread?
I'm working on a story where in 1983 the world went to full on global war and all nuclear power plants blew up either under nuclear fire or by losing power.
I know about the general 30km exclusion ...
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Effect of adding a fourth kind of radioactive decay
That question did spawn from though experiments about what kind of differences one had to expect in a parallel universe. When reading in fiction about this topic, sometimes the "changed natural ...
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Ways of detection of radiation wastelands/spots in a technology free world?
BACKSTORY: So in my story there was a type of nuclear winter that forced surviving humans to live underground until the world above became breathable again. By now the world than once was (our world) ...
