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Cobalt bomb
A cobalt bomb is a type of salted bomb: a nuclear weapon designed to produce enhanced amounts of radioactive fallout, intended to contaminate a large area with radioactive material, potentially for the purpose of radiological warfare, mutual assured destruction or as doomsday devices. There is no firm evidence that such a device has ever been built or tested.
The concept of a cobalt bomb was originally described in a radio program by physicist Leó Szilárd on February 26, 1950. His intent was not to propose that such a weapon be built, but to show that nuclear weapon technology would soon reach the point where a doomsday device could end human life on Earth.
The Operation Antler/Round 1 test by the British at the Tadje site in the Maralinga range in Australia on September 14, 1957, tested a bomb using cobalt pellets as a radiochemical tracer for estimating nuclear weapon yield. This was considered a failure, and the experiment was not repeated. In Russia, the triple "taiga" nuclear salvo test, as part of the preliminary March 1971 Pechora–Kama Canal project, produced relatively high amounts of cobalt-60 (60Co or Co-60) from the steel that surrounded the taiga devices, with this fusion-generated neutron activation product being responsible for about half of the gamma dose in 2011 at the test site. The high percentage contribution is largely because the devices primarily used fusion rather than fission reactions, so the quantity of gamma-emitting caesium-137 fallout was comparatively low. A secondary forest now exists around the lake that was formed by the detonation.
In 2015, a page from an apparent Russian nuclear torpedo design was leaked. The design was titled "Oceanic Multipurpose System Status-6", later given the official name Poseidon. The document states the torpedo would create "wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time." Its payload would be "many tens of megatons in yield". Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta speculated that the warhead would be a cobalt bomb. It is not known whether the Status-6 is a real project or whether it is Russian disinformation. In 2018, the Pentagon's annual Nuclear Posture Review stated Russia is developing a system called the "Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System". If Status-6 does exist, it is not publicly known whether the leaked 2015 design is accurate or whether the 2015 claim that the torpedo might be a cobalt bomb is genuine. Amongst other comments on it, Edward Moore Geist wrote a paper in which he says that "Russian decision makers would have little confidence that these areas would be in the intended locations" and Russian military experts are cited as saying that "robotic torpedoes could have other purposes, such as delivering deep-sea equipment or installing surveillance devices." The Poseidon nuclear weapon was later claimed by Russia's state television as real, described as being supposedly intended to destroy Britain and the Western Europe with a gigantic radioactive tsunami wave as stated by Dmitry Kiselyov's public threat of nuclear annihilation. Kiselyov's claim appeared to contain factual errors. Later, another Russian TV presenter, Vladimir Solovyov, issued a similar threat claiming that the Poseidon system could destroy the entire continental United States. Solovyov then issued another such threat against in America, claiming the existence of the "Poseidon-2".
A cobalt bomb could be made by placing a quantity of ordinary cobalt metal (59Co) around a thermonuclear weapon. When the bomb explodes, the neutrons produced by the fusion reaction in the secondary stage of the thermonuclear bomb's explosion would transmute the cobalt to the radioactive cobalt-60, which would be vaporized by the explosion. The cobalt would then condense and fall back to Earth with the dust and debris from the explosion, contaminating the ground. The deposited cobalt-60 would have a half-life of 5.27 years, decaying into 60Ni and emitting two gamma rays with energies of 1.17 and 1.33 MeV, hence the overall nuclear equation of the reaction is:
59
27Co + n → 60
27Co → 60
28Ni + e− + gamma rays.
Nickel-60 is a stable isotope and undergoes no further decays after the transmutation is complete.
The 5.27 year half-life of the 60Co is long enough to allow it to settle out before significant decay has occurred and to render it impractical to wait in shelters for it to decay, yet short enough that intense radiation is produced. Many isotopes are more radioactive (gold-198, tantalum-182, zinc-65, sodium-24, and many more), but they would decay faster, possibly allowing some population to survive in shelters.
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Cobalt bomb AI simulator
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Cobalt bomb
A cobalt bomb is a type of salted bomb: a nuclear weapon designed to produce enhanced amounts of radioactive fallout, intended to contaminate a large area with radioactive material, potentially for the purpose of radiological warfare, mutual assured destruction or as doomsday devices. There is no firm evidence that such a device has ever been built or tested.
The concept of a cobalt bomb was originally described in a radio program by physicist Leó Szilárd on February 26, 1950. His intent was not to propose that such a weapon be built, but to show that nuclear weapon technology would soon reach the point where a doomsday device could end human life on Earth.
The Operation Antler/Round 1 test by the British at the Tadje site in the Maralinga range in Australia on September 14, 1957, tested a bomb using cobalt pellets as a radiochemical tracer for estimating nuclear weapon yield. This was considered a failure, and the experiment was not repeated. In Russia, the triple "taiga" nuclear salvo test, as part of the preliminary March 1971 Pechora–Kama Canal project, produced relatively high amounts of cobalt-60 (60Co or Co-60) from the steel that surrounded the taiga devices, with this fusion-generated neutron activation product being responsible for about half of the gamma dose in 2011 at the test site. The high percentage contribution is largely because the devices primarily used fusion rather than fission reactions, so the quantity of gamma-emitting caesium-137 fallout was comparatively low. A secondary forest now exists around the lake that was formed by the detonation.
In 2015, a page from an apparent Russian nuclear torpedo design was leaked. The design was titled "Oceanic Multipurpose System Status-6", later given the official name Poseidon. The document states the torpedo would create "wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time." Its payload would be "many tens of megatons in yield". Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta speculated that the warhead would be a cobalt bomb. It is not known whether the Status-6 is a real project or whether it is Russian disinformation. In 2018, the Pentagon's annual Nuclear Posture Review stated Russia is developing a system called the "Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System". If Status-6 does exist, it is not publicly known whether the leaked 2015 design is accurate or whether the 2015 claim that the torpedo might be a cobalt bomb is genuine. Amongst other comments on it, Edward Moore Geist wrote a paper in which he says that "Russian decision makers would have little confidence that these areas would be in the intended locations" and Russian military experts are cited as saying that "robotic torpedoes could have other purposes, such as delivering deep-sea equipment or installing surveillance devices." The Poseidon nuclear weapon was later claimed by Russia's state television as real, described as being supposedly intended to destroy Britain and the Western Europe with a gigantic radioactive tsunami wave as stated by Dmitry Kiselyov's public threat of nuclear annihilation. Kiselyov's claim appeared to contain factual errors. Later, another Russian TV presenter, Vladimir Solovyov, issued a similar threat claiming that the Poseidon system could destroy the entire continental United States. Solovyov then issued another such threat against in America, claiming the existence of the "Poseidon-2".
A cobalt bomb could be made by placing a quantity of ordinary cobalt metal (59Co) around a thermonuclear weapon. When the bomb explodes, the neutrons produced by the fusion reaction in the secondary stage of the thermonuclear bomb's explosion would transmute the cobalt to the radioactive cobalt-60, which would be vaporized by the explosion. The cobalt would then condense and fall back to Earth with the dust and debris from the explosion, contaminating the ground. The deposited cobalt-60 would have a half-life of 5.27 years, decaying into 60Ni and emitting two gamma rays with energies of 1.17 and 1.33 MeV, hence the overall nuclear equation of the reaction is:
59
27Co + n → 60
27Co → 60
28Ni + e− + gamma rays.
Nickel-60 is a stable isotope and undergoes no further decays after the transmutation is complete.
The 5.27 year half-life of the 60Co is long enough to allow it to settle out before significant decay has occurred and to render it impractical to wait in shelters for it to decay, yet short enough that intense radiation is produced. Many isotopes are more radioactive (gold-198, tantalum-182, zinc-65, sodium-24, and many more), but they would decay faster, possibly allowing some population to survive in shelters.