Russia "missile explosion" - ???

[Jimmy Higgins]

So, something happened in Russia. Trump Admin wouldn't want to embarrass their pal Putin, so we won't hear much (granted, probably want to protect sources as well). But I was really curious about the "missile". There is a video showing a fire first and then a notable explosion, a nuclear like explosion. There was a shockwave not similar to what is seen when you look at the ATBIP conventional weapon explosion. I'm no expert on such things so I could be mistaken. There is also the other thing about if a missile explodes... shouldn't the fire come after the huge boom?

I suppose it is possible a fire started at the site, the missile never took over and it kaboomed, but if they were testing a missile... why is there a warhead in it? Would a nuclear like blast result in a nuclear propelled weapon occur?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Vodkastanis and nuclear materials, always a bad combination.

 

[marc]

Oh no, Trump mentioned the Russians were trying to develop a new missile engine... then said we are making the same thing, which is believed to have pissed off various national security agencies.... now that I’m thinking about it, could Russia have gotten the idea for this system from Trump? Who knows what he has bragged about to Putin.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oh no, Trump mentioned the Russians were trying to develop a new missile engine... then said we are making the same thing, which is believed to have pissed off various national security agencies.... now that I’m thinking about it, could Russia have gotten the idea for this system from Trump? Who knows what he has bragged about to Putin.

Not quite as bad as when W spilled we could arm our drones.

 

[Jarhyn]

Oh no, Trump mentioned the Russians were trying to develop a new missile engine... then said we are making the same thing, which is believed to have pissed off various national security agencies.... now that I’m thinking about it, could Russia have gotten the idea for this system from Trump? Who knows what he has bragged about to Putin.

Not quite as bad as when W spilled we could arm our drones.

To be fair, the first thing I thought about when drone technology was devised was "and then they put a gun barrel and firing pin on it and then killed people.with it"

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The best explanation I have seen is that they were testing a nuclear-thermal missile. This means a reactor running at very, very high power levels--it would be very easy for things to go wrong. If the reactor went prompt critical we would see a result consistent with what has leaked out. We looked at the idea long ago and dismissed it because of the hazards. When you're testing this a successful test still leaves you with an unshielded reactor core--and you're going to have a very hard time avoiding splattering that reactor across the ground wherever it ended it's flight. (It's flying too low for a parachute. You could program a pop-up maneuver but that would mean your test missile was not the same as a warshot. We were looking at them before the era of the ICBM, Russia has no reason for that but if it's hypersonic it would be harder to shoot down than an ICBM.

Note that they have already built a nuclear-powered torpedo. It probably doesn't need to run quite so hot and it's going slow, test torpedoes probably just dumped their reactor core onto the abyssal plain somewhere.

 

[Treedbear]

The best explanation I have seen is that they were testing a nuclear-thermal missile. This means a reactor running at very, very high power levels--it would be very easy for things to go wrong. If the reactor went prompt critical we would see a result consistent with what has leaked out. We looked at the idea long ago and dismissed it because of the hazards. When you're testing this a successful test still leaves you with an unshielded reactor core--and you're going to have a very hard time avoiding splattering that reactor across the ground wherever it ended it's flight. (It's flying too low for a parachute. You could program a pop-up maneuver but that would mean your test missile was not the same as a warshot. We were looking at them before the era of the ICBM, Russia has no reason for that but if it's hypersonic it would be harder to shoot down than an ICBM.

Note that they have already built a nuclear-powered torpedo. It probably doesn't need to run quite so hot and it's going slow, test torpedoes probably just dumped their reactor core onto the abyssal plain somewhere.

How would a nuclear powered engine even work? I guess it heats a fluid that turns a propeller or turbine, right? But then somewhere in the cycle you need to cool the fluid. You'd probably need a huge radiator. There's no external source of cooling water when in flight.

 

[Keith&Co.]

How would a nuclear powered engine even work? I guess it heats a fluid that turns a propeller or turbine, right? But then somewhere in the cycle you need to cool the fluid. You'd probably need a huge radiator. There's no external source of cooling water when in flight.

It's a jet turbine.
A rocket gets it up to speed, then the air gets compressed into the jet, and the reactor superheats the air to blast it out the exhaust.
Thing is, it just peppers the landscape with that exhaust, scattering radioactionative stuff all over hell and back.

As a weapon goes, it's beyond 'last resort' and into 'Alas, Babylon.' There's no expectation of winning a war with this thing, or even surviving one. Just making sure if you go down, everyone goes down with you.

 

[Treedbear]

How would a nuclear powered engine even work? I guess it heats a fluid that turns a propeller or turbine, right? But then somewhere in the cycle you need to cool the fluid. You'd probably need a huge radiator. There's no external source of cooling water when in flight.

It's a jet turbine.
A rocket gets it up to speed, then the air gets compressed into the jet, and the reactor superheats the air to blast it out the exhaust.
Thing is, it just peppers the landscape with that exhaust, scattering radioactionative stuff all over hell and back.

As a weapon goes, it's beyond 'last resort' and into 'Alas, Babylon.' There's no expectation of winning a war with this thing, or even surviving one. Just making sure if you go down, everyone goes down with you.

Got it. It's a ramjet.

On March 1, 2018 President Vladimir Putin announced Russia had developed a (presumed) nuclear powered ramjet cruise missile capable of extended long range flight.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

How would a nuclear powered engine even work? I guess it heats a fluid that turns a propeller or turbine, right? But then somewhere in the cycle you need to cool the fluid. You'd probably need a huge radiator. There's no external source of cooling water when in flight.

It's a jet turbine.
A rocket gets it up to speed, then the air gets compressed into the jet, and the reactor superheats the air to blast it out the exhaust.
Thing is, it just peppers the landscape with that exhaust, scattering radioactionative stuff all over hell and back.

As a weapon goes, it's beyond 'last resort' and into 'Alas, Babylon.' There's no expectation of winning a war with this thing, or even surviving one. Just making sure if you go down, everyone goes down with you.

A Doctor Strangelove doomsday weapon.

 

[bilby]

There's no more reason why a nuclear powered ramjet would generate a radioactive exhaust than there is for a nuclear powered submarine to do so.

You probably could design it so that it sprays fission products out if the exhaust, but likely it's easier to design it not to. And small amounts of radioactive materials are just not that harmful. If it's a supersonic missile, it's not going to be overhead for long enough to be a problem for people under its flightpah.

It's target will get a few extra fission products as a result of the atomisation of the reactor by the warhead; But if you are at or near the target of a thermonuclear warhead, that's the least of your worries.

And the propulsion reactor isn't going to cause a nuclear explosion. Those are very difficult to make, and aren't going to happen by accident in a device not explicitly designed for that purpose. The Manhattan Project didn't conclude that you could just throw together some fissile material and expect it to go 'bang'.

This accident was almost certainly a conventional explosion, probably of the starter propellant that gets the ramjet up to its working speed, that broke up the nuclear reactor. Effectively a 'dirty bomb'. And dirty bombs are really not very dangerous - their effects are mostly psychological.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2014/09/11/the-biggest-threat-dirty-bombs-pose-is-panic/amp/

All explosions 'look nuclear' if you (incorrectly but understandably) think that a mushroom cloud is diagnostic of nuclear explosions. It's not - almost all large explosions create mushroom clouds.

We evolved in, and live our lives in, a sea of radioactivity. A little more isn't doomsday - it's not even noticeable. Average background radiation exposure is about 4mSv a year (though it varies widely with location). You need at least 25 times that exposure to have ANY increase in cancer risk. You need about 4,000 times background, over a short period of time, to start to see symptoms of radiation poisoning, and ten times that to get LD50 for acute radiation exposure.

Tiny amounts of radiation are very easy to detect. But they are not worth worrying about. And they certainly aren't going to lead to global extinctions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The best explanation I have seen is that they were testing a nuclear-thermal missile. This means a reactor running at very, very high power levels--it would be very easy for things to go wrong. If the reactor went prompt critical we would see a result consistent with what has leaked out. We looked at the idea long ago and dismissed it because of the hazards. When you're testing this a successful test still leaves you with an unshielded reactor core--and you're going to have a very hard time avoiding splattering that reactor across the ground wherever it ended it's flight. (It's flying too low for a parachute. You could program a pop-up maneuver but that would mean your test missile was not the same as a warshot. We were looking at them before the era of the ICBM, Russia has no reason for that but if it's hypersonic it would be harder to shoot down than an ICBM.

Note that they have already built a nuclear-powered torpedo. It probably doesn't need to run quite so hot and it's going slow, test torpedoes probably just dumped their reactor core onto the abyssal plain somewhere.

How would a nuclear powered engine even work? I guess it heats a fluid that turns a propeller or turbine, right? But then somewhere in the cycle you need to cool the fluid. You'd probably need a huge radiator. There's no external source of cooling water when in flight.

And jets can't fly because the engine has no source of cooling water.

Air enters, is heated (cooling the reactor) and goes racing out the back. Your reactor isn't going to burn up it's uranium even on an intercontinental flight, you have a missile that has basically infinite range (eventually things like lubrication will impose a limit, you can't keep it in the sky forever any more than you can keep a jet in the sky forever with mid-air refueling.)

The only question is if you can do this fast enough to produce enough thrust for a useful missile.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How would a nuclear powered engine even work? I guess it heats a fluid that turns a propeller or turbine, right? But then somewhere in the cycle you need to cool the fluid. You'd probably need a huge radiator. There's no external source of cooling water when in flight.

It's a jet turbine.
A rocket gets it up to speed, then the air gets compressed into the jet, and the reactor superheats the air to blast it out the exhaust.
Thing is, it just peppers the landscape with that exhaust, scattering radioactionative stuff all over hell and back.

As a weapon goes, it's beyond 'last resort' and into 'Alas, Babylon.' There's no expectation of winning a war with this thing, or even surviving one. Just making sure if you go down, everyone goes down with you.

They already have such torpedoes. Run deep and fast (very hard to intercept), then come up and blow up a port city anywhere in the world.

It seems like they are obsessed with building weapons that can't be taken out by a preemptive strike, nor intercepted on the way to their targets.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There's no more reason why a nuclear powered ramjet would generate a radioactive exhaust than there is for a nuclear powered submarine to do so.

You probably could design it so that it sprays fission products out if the exhaust, but likely it's easier to design it not to. And small amounts of radioactive materials are just not that harmful. If it's a supersonic missile, it's not going to be overhead for long enough to be a problem for people under its flightpah.

It's target will get a few extra fission products as a result of the atomisation of the reactor by the warhead; But if you are at or near the target of a thermonuclear warhead, that's the least of your worries.

So far, so good. On another board a I did a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation showed a missile flying 5m up and 200m/s delivers a dose to someone it overflies of 1 millionth the dose it would give at 1m for 1hr--and note that I was simulating with 1/10 second steps rather than properly integrating (It would have taken too much time scraping rust off my calculus to do it right.) I'm sure the real number is well below what I came up with.

And the propulsion reactor isn't going to cause a nuclear explosion. Those are very difficult to make, and aren't going to happen by accident in a device not explicitly designed for that purpose. The Manhattan Project didn't conclude that you could just throw together some fissile material and expect it to go 'bang'.

This accident was almost certainly a conventional explosion, probably of the starter propellant that gets the ramjet up to its working speed, that broke up the nuclear reactor. Effectively a 'dirty bomb'. And dirty bombs are really not very dangerous - their effects are mostly psychological.

Here I disagree. This was supposedly a static test--there wouldn't have been a rocket. Instead, they would have had some big-ass fans producing the airflow. And a nuclear explosion isn't that hard to make--if you throw together enough fissile material it will go bang. It's just it will be a small bang, akin to what you can do with chemical explosives.

I do not fully agree about the threat of a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb poses no direct radiological threat, but what about one loaded with Strontium-90 powder? The threat is inhaled/ingested material getting in your bones.

All explosions 'look nuclear' if you (incorrectly but understandably) think that a mushroom cloud is diagnostic of nuclear explosions. It's not - almost all large explosions create mushroom clouds.

But a launch rocket wouldn't have that kind of power.

We evolved in, and live our lives in, a sea of radioactivity. A little more isn't doomsday - it's not even noticeable. Average background radiation exposure is about 4mSv a year (though it varies widely with location). You need at least 25 times that exposure to have ANY increase in cancer risk. You need about 4,000 times background, over a short period of time, to start to see symptoms of radiation poisoning, and ten times that to get LD50 for acute radiation exposure.

Here I agree.

Tiny amounts of radiation are very easy to detect. But they are not worth worrying about. And they certainly aren't going to lead to global extinctions.

And note that there is an unexplained radiation leak from Russia that appeared to be reactor-related. Given this incident I think they already blew up another of these.