Karshkovia

As have I

Oh well, no problem - I'll repost it here.
When I was reading through the thread, whilst I must applaud the research done into it, there is a flaw in the plot, which is the strength of the blast.

The strength of a nuclear explosion is determined by the mass of uranium which splits in the criticality incident. If a mass lower than 20kg of Uranium (or about 12kg of Plutonium) reaches criticality, then you'll get what's known in the trade as a fizzle: a massive burst of radiation, but nothing in the way of an explosion.

If we apply that to your fast breeder reactor, we see at once that an explosion is possible, since we have well over 20kg of Uranium (I believe that it's close to 100kg). However, the efficiency of the criticality needs to be looked at. When a high efficiency atomic weapon is detonated, shaped charges and reflectors mean that a core of Uranium is compressed perfectly, thus meaning the criticality occurs at high efficiency (up to 95% in some designs such as the Davy Crockett). With your reactor, we have quite a low efficiency due to two factors: firstly being the nature of the blast forcing the fuel into criticality (which would scatter some of the fuel, blasting it unevenly) and secondly being the effect of the heat of the critical mass (which would blast some of the fuel outwards). From this, we would be looking at an efficiency of 20% in the best of circumstances, meaning a nuclear explosion would only just happen.

From this, we can deduce that the maximum yield of such an explosion would be quite low: we'd be lucky to be talking kT TNT equivalent. For the purposes of this RP (assuming that we're using 250kg of Uranium 235 and at the time a large amount of plutonium was present in the reactor), I'd put the blast at 5kT at most. This would be enough to cause third-degree burning at about 500m from the reactor site, first-degree burning at 1500m and unhealthy amounts of initial radiation at up to 2000m (that being about 1 grey dose). The fallout however would be enormous: we'd be looking at excluding everyone from an area of about 100km from the centre for up to 50 years, not factoring in wind.

Any questions, PM me.

TO ALL: Between the days of Oct 31st and Nov 2nd 2008, I will not be available to respond to posts. Thanks for your understanding

Didn't you receive the telegram I sent you about your China Syndrome thread?

Can you send what you did in your telegram (if you did send me one) via this PM system? The telegram system on NS has completely crashed.

Thank you, I will look into it, but a wiki page probably won't come for a long time...

sorry should got back to you before.

i've told NI over MSN to look at their embassy thread ,he getting back to is another story

I was going to respond, but I got sidetracked and never got around to doing it. I apologise, as my activity in II has decreased due to my studies.

Sorry, to be a prude but, I think you used a swearword in your reply and I am trying to RP through a proxy blocker so if you could edit it that would be great.... Sorry again.

Hey, mind if I join the China Syndrome thread?