Word: kiloton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pomeroy and Sutton are guarded about the effect their filters will have on international networks for detecting underground nuclear tests. They calculate that six stations equipped with the new instruments could detect most underground disturbances anywhere on earth that have the energy of a "nominal" (20-kiloton) nuclear bomb. Between 20 and 50 stations (v. the presently postulated 180) would be required not only to detect but also locate such disturbances. They are not prepared to estimate just how many more would be required to detect explosions of bombs as small as 5 kilotons or how accurately they could distinguish...
...Biology and Medicine Director Charles L. Dunham, first to testify, carried a thick sheaf of papers that contained the biggest news of the hearings. Since 1945, Dunham revealed, the world's three atomic powers have exploded bombs with a total fission yield of more than 91,000 kilotons. The U.S. and Britain have been responsible for more than two-thirds of it. But the Russians contributed 21,000 of their 25,560-kiloton total in 1957-58 alone, raising the debris in the stratosphere to a record level...
...Chance in 200. What Gralla and his crew had come to shoot were three 57-ft. X-17A solid-propellant rockets, each tipped with a 1.5 kiloton atomic warhead (equivalent in blast to 1,500 tons of TNT). Since he had no target to hit except the wide sky, Gralla's job might have seemed simple, but in fact it was fantastically difficult. To enable the rockets to travel 300 miles up, he had to get them fired in an almost perfectly vertical course, a delicate task in rough seas. The rockets had to go off at precisely...
...heat, it flows indefinitely, whereas many heavy crudes thicken again in cooling. The spot picked by Richfield for its experiment has rich tar sand down to a depth of 1,000 ft. Then the underlying rock begins. If the A-bomb experiment works, the first small-scale (two-kiloton) detonation will be set off in the rock strata 1,200 ft. below the ground. Engineers expect that the bomb will create a huge cavity, and heat the sand and oil. A little sand will glassify on the cavity's sides. Then they hope that the oil will be thin...
...even as the negotiators were talking, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was totting up results of the October series of underground blasts at Yucca Flat, Nev. The results were enough to curl the scientists' hair: instead of a five-kiloton threshold, the real minimum underground blast that could be fully detected was about 20 kilotons-about the size of the Nagasaki-Hiroshima bombs. Science Advisory Committee Chairman James Rhyne Killian Jr. broke the news to President Eisenhower before Christmas, and the U.S. expects to break it to the Russians at Geneva this week. Next soul-searching question: Should...