On a related note, in college ca. 1999, when I took a history and philosophy of science course on nuclear weapons, the instructor, a retired Los Alamos physicist, assigned an excerpt from The Sum of All Fears as required reading.
He claimed it was — critical, probably deliberate technical inaccuracies notwithstanding — the best description of the process of detonating a nuclear weapon he was able to find in the open literature.
Amazing class, which also included a field trip to Oak Ridge, TN, where we got a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of the K-25 gaseous diffusion facility[1] while it was in the process of being decommissioned, and a far less interesting "tour" of the basically nonexistent public areas of the Y-12 weapons plant[2], where the only interesting things on display were the extensive security precautions.
power|3 years ago
jasomill|3 years ago
He claimed it was — critical, probably deliberate technical inaccuracies notwithstanding — the best description of the process of detonating a nuclear weapon he was able to find in the open literature.
Amazing class, which also included a field trip to Oak Ridge, TN, where we got a fascinating behind-the-scenes tour of the K-25 gaseous diffusion facility[1] while it was in the process of being decommissioned, and a far less interesting "tour" of the basically nonexistent public areas of the Y-12 weapons plant[2], where the only interesting things on display were the extensive security precautions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-12_National_Security_Complex