The Long Term Effects of Nuclear Weapons

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
Middle of the island, western shore; the wind usually goes from west to the east, but there are some low mountains in the middle of the island. The base also dealt with wet navy activities (a major factor on such a world).

2-4601,

Okay, that looks like good planning by the Matriarchate. They destroy the marine 'bunker' with their ground/ground penetrating burst and 'crap up' the surrounding area with all the 'nice' irradiated dirt. The area, including the wet navy base, will be useless until decontaminated and that may take some time. Depending on the amount of fallout - which is your call - the ships may be salvagable via decontamination also.

Check out the Bikini tests, the US discovered that ships have to be damn close to ground zero to sink immediately, but radiological decon problems will pose all sorts of repair and salvage problems. In a few cases, portions of the vessels became radiologically 'active', that is they became rad sources themselves.

As you surmise, you can fiddle the weather. Winds usually blow in one direction, not all the time. How about a winter morning? Land heats faster than the sea, air over it rises, and wind blows in from the sea from east to west Your dirty plume has just been blown inland.

The Matriarchate wanted that power plant offline for atleast several years; they should\ve done whatever needed to do so, and my setting assumes that they've hit it well enough to do this job - what needs to be destroyed for this is probably your call as you are the professional here

.

Well, if they hit it hard enough the plant will be offline forever because it won't be worthwhile fixing it when compared to building a new one. That's one option, but you also want a little Chernobyl in the mix too. I'm still trying to figure a way to 'crap up' the area around the plant well enough to significantly slow a rebuilding effort.

Trying to hit the fuel bundles inside the reactor vessel inside the containment dome and spread enough radiologicals about to 'crap up' the site is going to be tough. If you hit the dome that hard, you're more likely to collapse the dome on top of the reactor vessel and entomb the fuel! You'll have to really 'stir' the resultant rubble to release what you want.

Spent fuel rods may be our answer. They'll be stored somewhere on site. From your descriptions of the planet, rather low population and low tech, I seriously doubt that fuel rod processing(1) occurs there. Instead, the rods are shipped back and forth between the planet and whomever supplies them.

Let's say the Matriarchate times their attack for just after the power plant's refueling outage. Spent rods are stored on the site, in a building or facility Matriarchate intel has identified! The conventional missiles now have several targets at the plant site:

- The containment dome. Damage it and damage the machinery inside it.
- The turbine hall. I doubt the planet could easily repair or replace this item either.
- The location of the spent fuel rods(2). Smash it and spread the rods with their radiological materials around. This will 'crap up' the site and significantly slow or delay any repairs.

As I pointed out earlier, smash things enough and it might be cheaper/faster to build an entirely new plant somewhere else.

That's one reason I am so thankful for your advice...

Well, my advice should be watered down some. You're looking for ways to help your campaign and not for ways to precisely model reality. Where to draw the simulation vs. reality line is up to you!


Have fun,
Bill

1 - It's beyond the issue at hand here, but 'spent' fuel rods contain quite a bit of fuel that can still be used plus other nasty bits.

2 - In the US, this usually inside the containment dome too. But it needs o elsewhere for your campaign's purposes.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Originally posted by veltyen:
Water world.

A second thought I've been having, why didn't the aggressors drop the nukes in the water and wash the island away? Even relatively small nukes can create fairly large tsunamis. Somewhat less localised damage, but a much greater area of effect, and if they are trying to kill the infrastructure that should do the trick well.

I was about to suggest the same thing.

 

[Ranger]

What about using a deep detonation of a very small warhead, like an underground test detonation. The result would be a large surface crater without any significant distribution of radiation on the surface. Sounds like a perfect way to take out a starport or a military base if you never intend to occupy the ground yourself (you did say this was a raid).

Just my thoughts...

 

[jappel]

I was thinking along the same lines, Ranger. Bill, what about a two-stage burrowing munition (or several) that went off underneath the plant?

Although if the memories of my many-years-ago reading of "Dam Busters" holds, would this actually produce a cavity that the plant would fall into? I'm thinking of the 12,000 lb. "Tallboy" bombs here.

While you've got all that protection topside, how well-armored or protected are the floors & foundations of these facilities?

- John

 

[Chaos]

@Bill Cameron:

Regarding fall-out and wind directions... would the following idea work?

Suppose the Matriarchate detonated one or more nukes as ground bursts along, say the western shoreline of the island (in and arond the base), then detonated a few smaller nukes as air bursts somewhat to the west of the ground bursts. Would the shock wave of these other explosions be enough to blow the fall-out from the ground bursts across the island regardless of wind directions? I mean, would this work in principle, so as to not have to rely on the wind blowing in the right direction to spread the fall-out where they want it?

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Just a thought regarding 'crapping up' the island. If the reactor that gets bombed uses liquid sodium as a moderator/primary heat transfer fluid (like Chernobyl IIRC), then the possibility of massive explosion increases, especially on a water world.


(I know I'm showing a personal bias here, but I always thought that using liquid sodium inside of a reactor was just an unsafe design.)

 

[Anthony]

First of all: what level of contamination do you actually want? Unless the Matriarchate was actually trying to be massively dirty, which is possible but unclear in motivation:

Radiation from the city killers: at this point, mostly plutonium dust, and spread over a vast area. The city is probably habitable.

Radiation at the military base: radiation levels aren't going to kill people passing through, but it's very unlikely that the base itself, or anything in the immediate area, is still in use. It's likely that a lot of stuff was simply bulldozed into the crater and covered over with a layer of sand or concrete, in which case it's not very dangerous but is almost completely uninteresting.

Radiation at the nuclear plant: 2-3 years offline isn't actually very long for a power plant. They probably just sent kinetic strikes into the reactor cores. This could result in a fire or a chernobyl-like effect, or it could simply result in need to seal over and bury the reactor. In any case, given a couple of years they can simply build a new reactor, and radiation levels in the immediate area will be high enough to appreciably reduce lifespan, but won't make people fall over and die from walking through.

If you want to have lots of radiation, a ground burst on the power plant would do the job. So would a multi-megaton dirty bomb. From the indicated tactics, however, it sounds like the Matriarchy was trying to avoid such effects.

 

[TheDS]

All this focus on detonating nukes, when there's a MUCH easier way to deny the area to the residents: spread radioactive dust of an appropriate half life. Want it inaccessible for 10 years? Find something with a half life of about 5 years, powderize it, and spread it over the area from the air (or with a missile). Something more permanent can use stuff with million-year half life. But the point of area denial instead of area destruction is so that you the conqueror can eventually get the stuff yourself.

This was one way they thought of using radioactive materials, before they found out that you wouldn't have to use it ALL to reach critical mass, or that such an explosion wouldn't destroy the whole Earth's atmosphere in a chain reaction.

 

[veltyen]

The problem with decay is that it is exponential. With a half life of 5 years, after 10 years it is only 25% as radioative as at the initial drop. After 50 years it is only about 1/1000th as radioactive. But if you want it seriously contaminated at the start, then at 0.1% as radioactive as it was it is probably still very crapped up.

 

[veltyen]

Table of isotopes
http://lectureonline.cl.msu.edu/~mmp/kap30/Nuclear/nuc.htm
Has listed half-lives for, well, pretty much everything.

More Java illustrations here

Yet more data http://ie.lbl.gov/education/isotopes.htm

Apologies Bill, C13 is stable, I was thinking of C14.

C14 in earths biosphere sits at around 10^(-12) of all carbon. Avagadros constant is 6*10^23 or so, meaning that a gram of Carbon would contain around 5*10^10 C14 atoms. Given a 5000 year halflife that would indicate that that gram of matter should emit 5*10^6 neutrons in a year (an emission every 6 seconds or so) from C14 decay.

If you could push the decay rate of carbon-14 off the scale (change the half-life to milliseconds rather then millenia) then a certain amount of neutron activity would sterilize everything nearby.

 

[SanDragon]

Originally posted by TheDS:
All this focus on detonating nukes, when there's a MUCH easier way to deny the area to the residents: spread radioactive dust of an appropriate half life. Want it inaccessible for 10 years? Find something with a half life of about 5 years, powderize it, and spread it over the area from the air (or with a missile). Something more permanent can use stuff with million-year half life. But the point of area denial instead of area destruction is so that you the conqueror can eventually get the stuff yourself.

This was one way they thought of using radioactive materials, before they found out that you wouldn't have to use it ALL to reach critical mass, or that such an explosion wouldn't destroy the whole Earth's atmosphere in a chain reaction.

*cough* Umm.. yeah. Let's deny the enemy resources by irradiating the place, but send our own assets in. Yup. I like that idea... NOT!

 

[Whipsnade]

Gentlemen,

Great and nasty ideas all. I'm sure Mr. 2-4601 is busily scribbling them all down!

Rather than responding to every oen, let me comment on a few.

- Using a deep penetrator or bunker buster nuke to destroy the power plant: What a superbly nasty idea! 2 said conventional munitions had been used there, so I limited my suggestions to them. Because 2 wanted some sort of radiation release to occur also, I fetl his best bet would be to damage and disperse spent fuel rods instead of counting on releasing materials from the core. Damaging the core enough to release any materials also means you've damaged the containment structures. I would think the rubble of the latter would make releasing the former harder.

- Using air bursts to held spread the 'dirty' plumes from earlier ground bursts: Again, what a superbly nasty idea! The timing would be tricky (google 'fraticide' wrt nukes) but it could be done.

- Seeding with isotopes: Yet another superbly nasty idea! And those links are pure gold!

- Nuke generated tsunamis: How many times can I say 'what a superbly nasty idea! Water is sure to spread around 'crapped up' materials too.

Everyone has been quick to point out or grasp the differences between ground and air bursts too. A ground busrt may do less immediate damage, but it produces far more lingering effects.

Radiation is frightening and correctly so, but it is not the 'slate wiper' and 'nothing but mutants' producer our fears would have it be.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima were quickly rebuilt and are inhabited today, you can visit the Trinity site as part of a packag tour, the natives have returned to portions of the Bikini atoll chain, and the exclusion zone around Chernobyl has proven to be a godsend to wildlife in the region - living free of humans is apparently 'worth' putting up with the elevated background radiation.

Yes, there are health effects but there health effects in anything we do. Japan suffered far more birth defects from their sloppy handling of mercury in the 60s than the 1945 airbursts are responsible for, it's just that those airbursts are still creating problems while the mercury-derived problems are now few and far between. People living in Denver recieve far more radiation than those at sea level and it has a statistical health effect. People living in New England have higher amounts of thorium in their soil and bedrock and it too shows up statistically.

Life's a risk, you pays your money and takes your chances. The people on 2's island will pick the pieces after the orbital strike, examine their options, make their decisions, and move on. Some places will be abandoned, some places will be cleaned up, and some places will be immediately rebuilt.

And life goes on...


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Of couse, the *threat* of all this may be enough to force the world to surrender without a shot being fired...

 

[Chaos]

@Andrew:
But that would not keep anyone from taking up "business" again as soon as the Matriarchate´s enemy returned to the system. The place was supposed to be taken out, not conquered.

@Bill:
As for the tricky timing, I´m sure it is not as tricky as calculating a lot of other stuff that is taken for granted at that TL, like travelling through Jump Space.

Regarding the power plant... what about firing kinetic penetrators at the reactor, i.e. projectiles that penetrate the reactor from top to bottom and exit into the ground? If they have aimed well enough, the projectile penetrates far enough should crack the vital parts of the reactor... with the added nastiness of leaking radioactive coolant into the groundwater supplies...

 

[Andrew Boulton]

If you want to take it out, you'd hit it with more than a couple of 20kt nukes. Use those against small islands or ships. Hit the main island with a few megaton groundbursts - scrub it clean of life, and try to dump enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a nuclear winter to kill off any survivors.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
If you want to take it out, you'd hit it with more than a couple of 20kt nukes. Use those against small islands or ships. Hit the main island with a few megaton groundbursts - scrub it clean of life, and try to dump enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a nuclear winter to kill off any survivors.

The purpose was to completely disrupt the supply lines in one, limited raid behind the enemy lines, not kill everything on the planet. Human deathes are "collateral damage", not the mission objective. The matriarchate could use "feet", that is large astroid bombardment, for that purpose, and on a water world they would be even more devastating than nukes. A 1,000-ship-dton rock with the right ablative heat-shield coating (not too difficult if you're in the oort cloud and hence outside sensor range) near the main island would probably do the trick.

It was a military raid, not an anti-civilian raid. Cold military logic rather than a simple lust for blood. It is either Triumvirate civilian lives or Matriarchate ones.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Chaos:
As for the tricky timing, I´m sure it is not as tricky as calculating a lot of other stuff that is taken for granted at that TL, like travelling through Jump Space.

Chaos,

I did write that the timing would be tricky.

I also wrote that the timing could be done.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Chaos:
As for the tricky timing, I´m sure it is not as tricky as calculating a lot of other stuff that is taken for granted at that TL, like travelling through Jump Space.

Chaos,

I did write that the timing would be tricky.

I also wrote that the timing could be done.


Have fun,
Bill </font>[/QUOTE]That´s how I took it. I assumed that getting the timing right would take great effort and accuracy, but that it is not so difficult that the Matriarchate wouldn´t be confident they could do it.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

2-4601,
Listen to Bill.... I think the concept Bill mentions of essentially collapsing the power plant will suffice for your needs. If you bombard it, it will trap the nuke fuel inside the resultant rubble, making it effectively impossible to recover. If they get their fuel from off-world, they are out of luck, even if they manage to build a new plant in a few years. (Oh, and the nuke fuel being under that rubble will cause groundwater problems, someplace Travellers will stupidly go digging through, etc.)

A single, good, airburst should do for the other two locations. You might want to go for more of a 500kTon, though, for some more dramatic results. The areas might be "uninhabitable", but they wouldn't be for radiation - maybe memorials to the lost which make the areas taboo (even advanced civ's have taboos), etc.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
Listen to Bill.... I think the concept Bill mentions of essentially collapsing the power plant will suffice for your needs. If you bombard it, it will trap the nuke fuel inside the resultant rubble, making it effectively impossible to recover.

Fritz,

Thank you very much for the kudos, but all the responses here have been very useful IMHO. We certainly have some very nasty minds at work here at COTI!

The setting 'tapestry' 2-4601 is weaving should be all the better thanks to the many different 'threads' people have given him.

(Oh, and the nuke fuel being under that rubble will cause groundwater problems, someplace Travellers will stupidly go digging through, etc.)

Wow! That is one after-effect I hadn't yet considered! It's also one that would neatly fill 2-4601's 'abandoned areas' requirements; i.e. the area around the ruins of the power plant have been abandoned because the ground water is contaminated.

Digging wells is a non-starter, building local reservoirs is not geologically feasible, and long distance aqueducts are far too expensive so the surviving population must move.

Yet another excellent 'thread' for 2-4601's setting 'tapestry'!


Have fun,
Bill