Neutron bomb Bashny.Net

In Soviet times about it there were a lot of jokes ... The most ubiquitous of them: The platoon warrant terrible neutron bomb ...
-Why?
 - With the explosion of the neutron bomb killed all the people and material values ​​remain ...
- ??????????
 - And where was the platoon warrant all material values ​​disappear and only the people of the neutron bomb was one of horror stories in the late USSR, talked about it all and sundry, but few people know that in fact is a neutron bomb and whether be afraid.
In 1958, a man named Samuel Cohen suggested the idea of ​​a new weapon, the so-called neutron bomb. In those days, the main power of the state was just nuclear weapons, but, in spite of all the power, nuclear weapons were not very effective against armored vehicles, which shield the crew from all kinds of influences. Armor is well protected from the effects of radiation, any overlapped gap, but even just a ravine well protected from the shock wave. In general, the effectiveness of nuclear weapons was less than expected. Of course, we have in mind mainly tactical nuclear warheads, as strategic too powerful.
Solve the problem of efficiency of tactical nuclear weapons was a neutron bomb. The main feature of this type of weapon was that defeat manpower was mainly due to neutron radiation, which penetrates well through the armor, building and strengthening.





Principle of the neutron bomb was also quite simple, ie the composition of the neutron bomb was part of normal nuclear warhead plutonium-239 and a small amount of thermonuclear charge (several tens of grams of deuterium-tritium mixture). When detonating a nuclear charge is compressed and heating thermonuclear charge, which led to the merging of the nuclei of deuterium and tritium, as well as high-energy neutron radiation. On neutron radiation took up to 80 percent of the energy of thermonuclear reaction.



Intense neutron irradiation caused the death or disablement of a significant amount of manpower. Since neutron radiation has good penetrating power, the walls of buildings and fortifications, and armor were not protected. In addition, the intense neutron irradiation induced induced radioactivity, which in turn led to further exposure of the enemy. Another advantage of the neutron bomb was the fact that radioactive contamination was held only a few years, then the background came almost back to normal.
With the explosion of the neutron bomb capacity of just 1 kiloton, neutron radiation kills all living within a radius of 2, 5 kilometers.
In addition to the destruction of enemy personnel, the neutron bomb to be used in missile defense. Earlier in the missile defense used nuclear warheads, their use in the upper atmosphere or in outer space is not effective. The thing is that the shock wave is very weak in the upper atmosphere because the air is thin and completely absent in outer space, and radioactive radiation does not have much impact because of the rapid absorption of the missile body. The only factor that can hit a rocket, was an electromagnetic pulse.
Another thing with the neutron bomb, as the neutron radiation has a high penetrating power, it is quite capable of damaging internal missiles and bring it down.
Mass production of neutron bombs began in 1981, however, they are produced and kept in the ranks a little more than ten years. Why so few? Yes, because our country's engineers have found a simple and effective response in the body armor and missiles began to add boron and depleted uranium (234 and 238), which were good neutron absorbers. As a result, primary effects of a neutron bomb has become practically useless. In 1992, the last neutron bombs were dismantled.
However, apart from the US, neutron bombs developed Russia, China and France. Now you can not reliably tell how much of the neutron bomb is armed with these countries. The thing is that the effectiveness of neutron bombs fell only in respect of military facilities, but against civilians, it has remained virtually the same ...



Source: world-pulse.ru