Word: kiloton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...increased, although Admiral William Raborn Jr. has said he needs no further tests of the present Polaris warhead. Some U.S. scientists and military men would like further testing to develop "clean" nuclear weapons with little fallout. The U.S. has developed small warheads, with a yield of less than one kiloton,* for use in tactical weapons, but so far these small warheads are "dirty," and the dirtiness makes it difficult for troops to follow behind the bombardment...
...Underground tests of much less than 19 kilotons could be carried out with slight risk of detection. And by going to a lot of expense, the U.S.S.R. could carry out tests much bigger than 19 kilotons without much risk. Under the "big-hole" theory worked out by U.S. scientists, an explosion in a very large, spherical underground chamber would be muffled by a factor of as much as 300 to 1, so that a 100-kiloton explosion would set up no stronger a tremor than an unmuffled one-third kiloton explosion, and would thus go entirely undetected. Excavating...
...kiloton is the equivalent in blast of 1,000 tons of TNT. The bomb that wrecked Hiroshima measured about 20 kilotons. In the strange vocabulary of nuclear weapons, a one-kiloton weapon is considered "small." A megaton is 1,000 kilotons, or the equivalent of 1,000,000 tons...
...Marcoule, near Avignon in southern France. Together the three turn out about 100 kilograms of plutonium a year. In anyone's nuclear language, this is a respectable amount of plutonium, and with it France can turn out an estimated twelve atomic bombs a year, in the 20-200 kiloton range. By the end of 1961, when two reactors now under construction at Chinon begin to produce, France's annual output should increase to 320 kilograms...
...Equal, by U.S. measurement, to a 20-kiloton, or Hiroshima, bomb...