Word: kiloton
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...sunk 1,200 ft. in the ground to penetrate a thick formation of rock salt. From the shaft's bottom, a 1,116-ft. horizontal tunnel leads into the salt and curves back on itself in a giant hook. At the tip of the hook a small (5-kiloton) bomb will be exploded in December. If all goes well, the explosion will seal the horizontal tunnel by collapsing the hooked end, and it will leave a cavity partly filled with molten salt...
...probably by injecting water into the cavity and taking it out as high-pressure steam, capable of running a turbine. No one expects that the first small explosion (cost: $5,500,000) will yield power cheap enough to be economically competitive. Even if all the energy in the 5-kiloton Domb were recovered as electric power, it would cost nearly $1 per kwh. Conventional coal-fired power stations produce electricity for less than...
...Kiloton, a unit used in measuring the energy of a nuclear weapon, is equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of 1,000 tons of TNT. A megaton is equivalent to 1,000,000 tons. The Hiroshima bomb was a 20-kiloton bomb...
Compared to some of the atomic devices that the Russians have exploded since Sept. 1, the low-yield (probably not more than one kiloton) U.S. test seemed as tame as a firecracker. But it carried the U.S. a step forward in its tactical weapons development. And unlike Russia's atmospheric explosions-which have scattered radioactive debris from far beyond its borders-the U.S. test caused not a particle of fallout...
What U.S. weapons have already been tested? At the start of the test moratorium in the fall of 1958, the U.S. had a family of well-tested bombs ranging in power from less than one kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT) up to 20 megatons (equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT). The 20-megaton weapons are too heavy for existing U.S. missiles, but more than one of them can be carried by far-ranging B-52 bombers. U.S. authorities, both civilian and military, see little advantage in more powerful bombs, such as the 100-megaton horror mentioned by Khrushchev...