![]() The number of direct injuries would also be substantial and "a single nuclear explosion might produce 10,000 cases of severe burns requiring specialized medical treatment in an all-out war there could be several million such cases." ![]() ![]() The strength and intensity of modern nuclear weapons are far greater than the ones used during World War II, with the potential to cause "global fallout" because of the "sheer quantity of radioactive material and partly from the fact that the radioactive cloud rises well into the stratosphere, where it may take months or even years to reach the ground," according to MIT Press Reader. With ongoing global tension, especially among the U.S., China, Russia, and North Korea, the fear of nuclear threats has remained top-of-mind. Using weapons with both reactions "can release more explosive energy in a fraction of a second than all of the weapons used during World War II combined," including the two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the Union of Concerned Scientists explained. However, in order to spark the fusion reaction, modern-day weapons tend to have a preliminary fission reaction, giving them a " two-stage design - a primary fission or boosted-fission component and a secondary fusion component." "When exposed to extremely high temperatures and pressures, some lightweight nuclei can fuse together to form heavier nuclei," and in turn release energy, as described by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The process "becomes self-sustaining as neutrons produced by the splitting of atom strike nearby nuclei and produce more fission."įusion bombs are more efficient than fission bombs alone. In nuclear fission, neutrons collide with the nucleus of an unstable isotope, namely uranium-235 or plutonium-239, which in turn forces the atom into "splitting the nucleus into fragments and releasing a tremendous amount of energy," according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation. ![]() The destructive power of the weapons comes from two processes: nuclear fission, when "scientists split the nucleus of an atom into two smaller fragments with a neutron," and nuclear fusion, which "involves bringing together two smaller atoms to form a larger one." ![]()
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