Nuclear weapons are categorized as fission or fusion bombs, with variants such as salt bombs and neutron bombs. They can have a range of yields and sizes, from the powerful Tsar Bomba to small warheads like the Davy Crockett. Early designs used small cannons, while modern designs use implosion assemblies. The military favors small to medium range weapons with attention to delivery methods, such as the American LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile.
There are two main categories of nuclear weapons, classified according to their operating mechanism: fission bombs, which break apart heavy atomic nuclei to release energy, and fusion bombs, which fuse light nuclei. Fusion bombs tend to be much more powerful. Within these categories of nuclear weapons, there are slight variants: for example, a salt bomb is surrounded by a layer of material that can become highly radioactive with neutron bombardment, and fission-enhanced weapons are nuclear weapons that, despite being based on fission, they exploit fusion reactions to increase their yield. Neutron bombs, or enhanced radiation weapons, are fusion weapons designed to emit intense neutron radiation, killing all life within a certain area but doing less damage to buildings.
Most nuclear weapon variants are designed to have a spectrum of yields and sizes available for different applications. The most fearsome nuclear weapon of all time was the Tsar Bomba, a Soviet fusion bomb with the explosive force of 50 megatons of TNT. It was originally planned to have a yield of 100 megatons, but this was scaled back due to fallout issues. In contrast, smaller nuclear weapons, such as some warheads for Operation Plumbbob at the Nevada Test Site, may have a yield of just a ton of TNT, or less. The smallest mass-produced nuclear weapon to be deployed was the Davy Crockett warhead, designed for firing infantry from small redeployable mortars. It was deployed to Germany to defend against a Soviet invasion of Europe.
Early nuclear weapon designs were modeled on small cannons, which fire one hemisphere of highly enriched uranium into another hemisphere of highly enriched uranium, initiating a nuclear reaction and the subsequent release of heat and light in large quantities. More modern designs use implosion assemblies, in which spheres of segmented uranium are surrounded by chemical explosives that all explode simultaneously, concentrating the uranium at the center and starting a chain reaction.
It is possible to make nuclear weapons quite small, on the order of the size of a toaster oven. Because extremely large nuclear weapons cause collateral damage in the form of fallout and have low yields because more of the uranium is dispersed without fission, the military favors nuclear weapons in the small to medium range. More attention to the delivery method. Until they were decommissioned in 2005, the most fearsome delivery method for nuclear weapons worldwide was the American LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile. It contained 10 re-entry vehicles, each carrying a nuclear warhead 25 times more powerful than the bomb that incinerated Hiroshima. One of these could spread destruction over a very large area of land.
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