The film “Oppenheimer” is currently playing in theaters. It tells the story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is known as the father of the atomic bomb. Here’s an overview of the history and the current state of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. nuclear warhead arsenal
Each point represents a nuclear weapon. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the U.S. nuclear arsenal consists of over 3,800 weapons, with approximately 1,740 deployed nuclear weapons available for use.
The circles below depict the blast radius of the Hiroshima atomic bomb compared to a modern hydrogen bomb.
The Hiroshima bomb, known as Little Boy, was detonated 1,900 feet above the city to maximize destruction. It was later estimated to have a yield of 15 kilotons and destroyed two-thirds of the city. The population present at the time was estimated to be 350,000, and 140,000 people died as a result of the explosion and its radiation.
In the current U.S. nuclear arsenal, the W88 warheads deployed on Trident II submarine-launched missiles have an estimated yield of 475 kilotons.
How it began
The atomic bomb was only tested once, which prompted Robert Oppenheimer to quote words from Hindu scripture: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
The concept was simple: by bringing together enough uranium or plutonium at high speeds, a “critical mass” would be achieved, initiating an uncontrolled chain reaction of neutrons rapidly splitting atomic nuclei.
Only 1.09 kg of the 64 kg of uranium in Little Boy was converted into energy.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists features a story on Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project here.
World’s nuclear warhead stockpile
Seventy-five years after the atomic explosion in Hiroshima, thousands of nuclear weapons are still stockpiled around the world, ready to be deployed by aircraft or missile. The Arms Control Association estimates that there are nearly 14,000 of these weapons, with the United States and Russia possessing the largest numbers: 6,185 for the United States and 6,490 for Russia. However, only about a third of these weapons could be immediately used in a war.
The United States spends approximately $50 billion annually on its nuclear weapons.
Since 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear explosive tests have been conducted worldwide.
The two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, have not tested any nuclear weapons since 1992. Other countries attempting to develop their own arsenals have conducted more recent tests.
The first series of thermonuclear tests occurred on November 1, 1952, on the small Pacific island of Elugelab at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The explosion released an energy equivalent to 10 megatons of TNT, roughly 1,000 times larger than the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb.
Sources: Nuclear Explosion DataBase, FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS