Considering Israel and the US are bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities because they have “weapons of mass destruction”, if Iran really did have such weapons, wouldn’t bombing the facilities they’re held in cause them to explode, or cause an evident ripple at least? I may be imagining this in a way cartoonier way than military weapons actually work, but I’m preparing myself for some incredibly annoying debates.
Yes. The people in this thread are wrong. Bombing a nuke can set it off, just not fully.
A nuke may require many precise detonations to function as intended. When everything goes right it will release it’s full power.
When an external explosion hits the nuke, only some material should activate, causing a relatively tiny explosion. Shouldn’t be any real fallout.
This assumes the designers specifically made the nuke to not go off from one explosion. There’s no rule that says you need to make nukes safe. People shouldn’t dismiss a partial detonation of a nuke like it’s nothing.
Edit: look up “one-point safety.” Safer nukes are designed so very little happens when there’s eg an explosion. If nukes didn’t go off when bombed this wouldn’t be a thing.
One-point safety is about preventing a nuclear yield when one of the explosives inside the nuke go off by accident and not all of the detonation triggers. It does help to prevent accidental nuclear yield if the nuke is destroyed by an external explosion. But you’re understimaing how extremely difficult it is to initiate a nuclear fission event. Not only should all the trigger explosives go off, the fission material has to be hit by the explosion from the right place and in a correct sequence and timeframe. Else the fission won’t start.
Bombs are even stored separate from the explosives sometimes, for extra safety. The biggest issue with these attacks is radioactive material contamination. The risk of a nuclear explosion from bombing a weapons development or storage site is one in billions.
The internal explosive may malfunction from an external stimuli, such as a massive bomb detonation near it.
One-point safety sets cutoffs for how much yield can be produced from a malfunction. That’s for countries experienced with nukes who had time to fix their catastrophic failures.
Considering there’s many ways to design nukes, different countries have different technological capabilities, the answer isn’t a squeaky clean “No.” when someone asks if nukes can explode when bombed. Answers should have more gradation. And they shouldn’t imply a nuke in Iran wouldn’t catastrophically fail because sophisticated designs from countries allowed to have nukes have ironed out the wrinkles. Iran is smart and capable like any other country but they’re being badly stressed and their context is different than the traditional nuclear powers.
It may, but that is in armed and ready bombs. Nukes are stored with the explosives separate from the fissible material.
That point is moot though. As we know Iran is still years away from a nuclear bomb, because Trump and Netanyahu are liars. As evidence by the fact there is no radioactive spill from the facilities destroyed. Either Iran didn’t have the material there yet, or they already built the bombs and they are stored elsewhere. The first scenario seems more likely.