Word: kiloton
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...between ten and 20 nuclear weapons "available for use." In fact, TIME has learned, Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal of 13 atomic bombs, assembled, stored and ready to be dropped on enemy forces from specially equipped Kfir and Phantom fighters or Jericho missiles. These weapons have a 20-kiloton yield, roughly as powerful as those that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...long since been made obsolescent by the Soviet nuclear-powered submarines of the Yankee and Delta classes. Nonetheless, in the superstructure behind its tall conning tower, the submarine typically carried three nuclear-tipped missiles of the Serb class, which has a 650-mile range and a 500 kiloton warhead. At the time the SALT I negotiations were about to start, and an examination of the Serb warheads would have given U.S. experts an invaluable insight into the state of Soviet nuclear technology. They could have learned about the reliability, accuracy and method of triggering the nuclear matter of Soviet missiles...
...that the explosions would not only cost considerably less than conventional explosives but produce no dangerous fallout either in the U.S.S.R. or abroad. As proof, they revealed hitherto secret details of a 1971 test along the canal route. It involved the simultaneous detonation of a row of three 15-kiloton nuclear charges (compared with 20 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb), spaced about 500 ft. apart. The blasts produced so little radiation and such stable walls that technicians were able to walk along the rim of the 2,600-ft.-long crater only two days later. The only damages were some...
...bomb threat that terrified Orlando, Fla., for 36 hours. Nor is cost a deterrent. University of Virginia Professor Mason Willrich, a nuclear-arms expert, estimates that a weapons fabrication and assembly plant that can manufacture ten fission warheads annually costs about $8 million to build. Each 20-kiloton warhead would run less than $15 million, plus the cost of the fissionable material. This is within the reach of even the most impoverished nation willing to divert resources from social programs...
...study conducted for the Ford Foundation by Atomic Physicist Theodore B. Taylor and Arms Control Expert Mason Willrich makes the point even more strongly. In "Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards," Taylor and Willrich report that amateur bombmakers could probably put together weapons as small as one-tenth of a kiloton (equivalent to the explosive force of 100 tons of TNT). Such bombs, says Taylor, would be powerful enough to topple the twin towers of Manhattan's 110-story World Trade Center or destroy the U.S. Capitol building...