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From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Terminology:Nuclear, Atomic, Neutron
Message-ID: <1991Feb22.232819.4666@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 22 Feb 91 23:28:19 GMT
References: <1991Feb21.030902.12162@cbnews.att.com>
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Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
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From: john%ghostwheel.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
In article <1991Feb21.030902.12162@cbnews.att.com> 6600vamp@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Le Vampire) writes:
>
>  The press as well as many of us laymen has the tendency to
>throw around the words 'nuclear weapons' and 'atomic weapons'
>rather interchangeably. Is there a difference between nuclear
>and atomic weapons? Also, is a neutron bomb an atomic/nuclear
>weapon. From what I understand it is merely a stripped down
>H-bomb. Thanks for the help.
>

Fission is an atomic process, so a fisson weapon is an atomic weapon.
Fusion is a nuclear process, so a fusion weapon is a nuclear weapon.
For the purposes of the press however, I can't see it matters.  Also,
fusion weapons are initiated by a fission weapon, so they are in
fact a hybrid.

As I recall, a neutron weapon is just a normal fission or fusion
device with the outer neutron reflector removed.  Normal 
atomic/nuclear weapons have an outer layer (talking rather
generally) about the nuclear component whose purpose is to reflect
the escaping neutrons back into the fissionable or fusionable 
component.  This increases the blast yield.  Neutron weapons
(as I understand it, please correct me if I am wrong) have this
ommitted.  

John

--
John K. Prentice    john@unmfys.unm.edu (Internet)
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Computational Physics Group, Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA


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