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karlgkk

We don’t need it. We have about 3500 warheads and another 1500 awaiting dismantlement

I’m not going to say that a country doesn’t need nuclear weapons in the modern era. As disappointing as that is.

But I really do not see why we need 3500

Surely, 1500 nuclear bombs is an effective deterrent

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There's 'x' number that is effective and practical. You have to have x1 number of submarines deployed at any time, x2 in ICBM silos, x3 on carriers, x4 on destroyers, x5 stationed at air bases. Of that pool, probably 50% have to be rotated off for maintenance, etc.

Whatever that number is, the 31,000+ we used to have was stupid. 3,500 in a historical context is a relief.

The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more. You want to be 100% certain it goes off when needed, but it's pretty hard to test that theory without... testing one.

If all that could be done with 1,500 I'm all in. Just a lot of 'practical' considerations that go into whatever 'x' number is.

> The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more.

This is why the DOE has the most powerful supercomputers in the world. They have to simulate nuclear explosions because they can't test them.

I wonder to what extent simulation can reliably test the mechanical and detonation aspects? I always imagined simulation assumed you have an explosion and you want to see the effect.

That's where the NIF comes into play, the National Ignition Facility. They use lasers to generate conditions similar to a nuclear explosion for testing purposes.

If you can’t run physical experiments to adjust your models, you are limited with what you can do in terms of new designs. I would assume manufacturing and maintenance of nuclear warheads is very conservative with their designs.

There are probably economies of scale associated with maintaining nuclear weapons. Whether you have 1500 or 3500, you need a “large scale nukes” program. You’re not going to cut costs in half by cutting nukes in half.

You also have to consider that nukes have to be distributed around the world, so that you can target enemies throughout the world, so that enemies don’t know where to target their missile defense systems, and so that you still have adequate threat if sites are attacked.

This was true before missile defense systems started becoming a factor. If 1500 is an effective deterrent, you need 1500 multipled by the inverse of whatever percentage of those bombs your adversary can plausibly stop.

I can just see, shaking with horror, the image of missiles and anti missiles smashing into each other, raining immense radiation into the oceans poisining everything. And thats the best case, where the earheads are intercepted successfully.

You can also think of the warheads detonating before it reaches the target but before it’s intercepted. A high atmosphere EMP is much better for the attacker than a couple kilograms of enriched fissiles being distributed over your target.

Assumimg each warhead has 5kg of plutonium and each side launches 3500, that's 35 tones of plutonium.

The estimation is that the sea has 4E9 tones of disolved uranium.

I'd better not try, but there is already a lot of natural radioactive materialas in the sea.

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Acording to a ramdon Reddit comment https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/96oprs/comment/... a core of a warhead in your hand gives 0.5S.

That is like 5E6 bananas, that is like 3E3 tones of bananas.

Assuming 3500 warheads on each side, thats line 2E7 tones of bananas.

The anual production of bananas is 8E7 tones of bananas per year. So dropping all the warheads in the see is like dropping 3 months of the banana production.

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Anyway, most of the radioactivity of bananas is due to potasium, that is very soluble so it goes to the pee that goes to the river that goes to the sea. So it's not necesary to sink the ships, just eat the bananas and wait.

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Anyway, potasium is very soluble and does not accumulate too much in animals and plants. I'm bot sure about plutonium.

> 1500 nuclear bombs is an effective deterrent

Not if ABM programs such as Golden Shield (I’m inclined to call it Phantom Menace, because it’s a crappy sequel to Star Wars) succeed. If you launch all your 1500 warheads and only 15 reach their targets, you’ll need a lot more warheads.

It's complex, for sure. I look back to the JFK era and how those folks handled far larger nuclear arsenals -- and then created the space program as we know it today. Peaceful exploration of space during the Cold War, with much of the same technology as ICBMs.

We're a far cry from that at the moment. In my view, US democracy is being contested (to say it with understatement), and US and Allied security also -- both more than probably any time in the Cold War. Worse than this is the threat to the alliance system.

The difference is now, China is ramping up its nuclear arsenal and has the economic backing to make it happen. The Russians can't be ignored either as their systems are very advanced and quite numerous. So I think to get past our internal problems in the Western world, we need a time margin of maybe 20 years.

Seen in this light, $956B over 10 years is not extreme, assuming it will indeed produce many other economic effects and technological breakthroughs (not just more graft for the billionaires). It's just I'd rather also see a massive increase in NASA funding with clear programmatic goals (instead of 'worship SpaceX'), international cooperation, and tie it to restoration of funding at the civilian agencies. We're far from that being viable at this point, however.

> with much of the same technology as ICBMs.

It’s kind of a running joke that in order for your propulsion research to get funding it needs military applications. So, unless you can make the case to put a nuke in front of your highly efficient electric thruster, you are fighting for scraps.

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