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80 years ago today, the US dropped Fat Man, the plutonium-powered implosion bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan. I'm visiting Los Alamos, where the bomb was built, and today saw this replica at the lab's Bradbury Science Museum. LANL is now building replacement plutonium pits at TA-55. Heavy thoughts.
#History #LosAlamos #NewMexico #NuclearWar #AtomicBomb #WW2 #Science

A rotund yellow and black replica of Fat Boy, the atomic bomb the US dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

Josh :everything_bagel:

@josh0@babka.social replied · 3 weeks ago

@stshank I was actually just there a couple days ago. It’s a great little museum, in no small part because of those heavy thoughts. I don’t go every time I’m in Los Alamos, but we often take visitors.

(((Ttown)))🌐✌

@Ttown@mstdn.social replied · 3 weeks ago

@stshank
Freaking small to contain so much death.

Charlie Stross

@cstross@wandering.shop replied · 3 weeks ago

@Ttown @stshank Nah, in A-bomb terms Fat Man was gigantic and inefficient. If you want small, see the W54 warhead from the late 1950s–here's the warhead from the Davy Crockett recoilless gun system. Weighs about 1% of a Fat Man!

Four men in suits leaning over a W54 bomb. The bomb has fins and is about 50cm long and 30cm in diameter: it's light enough to carry (just)

(((Ttown)))🌐✌

@Ttown@mstdn.social replied · 3 weeks ago

@cstross @stshank
That IS small. Same potential?

I still find it terrifying that just one Big Boy or one W54 could kill a whole city. Truly the dark side of science.

Charlie Stross

@cstross@wandering.shop replied · 3 weeks ago

@Ttown @stshank No; the W54 maxed out at 1 kiloton, Fat Man yielded about 14kT. W54 was intended for demolishing bridges and whacking Soviet tank regiments.

But note that a more modern B61 bomb weighed only 360kg and had a yield of up to 400kT, so 50x Fat Man in less than a tenth the weight.

Stephen Shankland

@stshank@mstdn.social replied · 3 weeks ago

@cstross @Ttown For comparison, here's the MK-12A delivery vehicle for a W78 nuclear warhead for Minuteman missiles. Yield 335–350 kilotons. About as tall as an adult. (Also in the Bradbury Science Museum.)

A black conical reentry vehicle designed to deliver missile-launched nuclear warheads

Alex 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@alexlac51@mastodon.scot replied · 3 weeks ago

@stshank

was it not 80 years ago? ...

Stephen Shankland

@stshank@mstdn.social replied · 3 weeks ago

@alexlac51 Urk yes!

Stephen Shankland

@stshank@mstdn.social replied · 3 weeks ago

Pit production is at TA-55, LANL's Plutonium Facility, which I visited in the 1990s as a journalist when the post-Cold War lab was trying to become more transparent. Now Russians are talking up hypersonic missile and arms control agreements are lapsing. https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/national-security-science/1221-pit-production-explained

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