RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based bomber torpedo attacks...

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> War In The Pacific - Struggle Against Japan 1941 - 1945 >> RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based bomber torpedo attacks...

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RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based ... - 5/1/2006 8:45:21 PM

juliet7bravo

Posts: 894
Joined: 5/30/2001
Status: offline

Anyone have the "Handbook of Japanese Explosive Ordnance" in electrons? I'm ashamed to admit that I don't own a copy...

(in reply to bradfordkay)

Post #: 211

RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based ... - 5/1/2006 8:47:38 PM

Mike Solli

Posts: 15792
Joined: 10/18/2000
From: the flight deck of the Zuikaku
Status: offline

tc464 might. He's into that kind of stuff. EOD types.....

(in reply to juliet7bravo)

Post #: 212

RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based ... - 5/1/2006 9:23:11 PM

juliet7bravo

Posts: 894
Joined: 5/30/2001
Status: offline

Well, the actual numbers for comparing fillers and penetration of all their bomb types, and cross check them against Allied types are all readily available for use. Be easy enough to give all the hardware realistic performance figures. If that didn't happen in the original stats.

(in reply to Mike Solli)

Post #: 213

RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based ... - 5/2/2006 6:48:45 AM

ChezDaJez

Posts: 3436
Joined: 11/12/2004
From: Chehalis, WA
Status: offline

quote:

I see you skipped Nuclear Power School.

You are correct, I never went. All I know about it is from reading open-source material and from taking a college level course on nuclear power generation. Oh, that and studying Soviet nuclear reactor propulsion design as part of my job in the Navy for 26 years.

I may not be an expert nor even considered highly knowledgeable on the subject. But I do know enough to be very, very dangerous!

Chez

_____________________________

Ret Navy AWCS (1972-1998)
VP-5, Jacksonville, Fl 1973-78
ASW Ops Center, Rota, Spain 1978-81
VP-40, Mt View, Ca 1981-87
Patrol Wing 10, Mt View, CA 1987-90
ASW Ops Center, Adak, Ak 1990-92
NRD Seattle 1992-96
VP-46, Whidbey Isl, Wa 1996-98

(in reply to el cid again)

Post #: 214

RE: Small/quick/simple idea how to restrict land based ... - 5/2/2006 9:08:14 AM

el cid again

Posts: 16922
Joined: 10/10/2005
Status: offline

quote:

I may not be an expert nor even considered highly knowledgeable on the subject. But I do know enough to be very, very dangerous!

I see that - or in this case not dangerous. U-235 is the fuel that burns in a uranium reactor. There have been a few Plutonium fueled reactors - and given the thousands of tons of Plutonium on the planet that may become normal (Japan has bought most of it - I think for power plants - but it also threatened China it would "field more than a thousand nuclear weapons" if it didn't stop threatening its neighbors). And there are experiments with U-233 - which is very attractive - and quite superior reactor fuel - but it is not economic to start a fuel cycle. India and Israel are most likely to start that one day - because it allows thorium to be a source of fuel. Uranium is not abundent in South and East Asia - one of Japan's problems.

Anyway, uranium and plutonium is not really suitable for radiological weapon use BEFORE you put them in a reactor (after is a different subject - but that is not exactly a good application - there are better ways to get there). Further, radiological materials are problematical: they decay - they don't sit well on a shelf without losing potency - they are not very effective - are subject to conditions like wind - and they cost MORE per casualty (by far) than using the same reactor time to make atom bomb fuel. Which is why they did not catch on after the US and USSR did lots of tests on the Axis idea in the 1950s. [I have ALL the US test reports - if anyone wants to see them.]

U-233 is pretty hot - or rather it comes with other isotopes that are pretty hot - so it is almost like radiological material even if intended as bomb fuel. In fact, the best way to use U-233 is something like a CANDU reactor: the Canadian system makes plutonium in a reactor and just lets it sit there - becoming fuel. You can put thorium in the core and it will convert to U-233 - and that then becomes more reactor fuel - replacing the "burned" U-235. And that - by the way - is a WWII era Japanese idea - one that one day may turn out to matter: they may make plutonium fired power reactors and put thorium in there - generating U-233 to replace the plutonium. When they run out of plutonium, they can probably keep the cycle going with U-233 alone. But the wartime Japanese program had these machines:

a sub critical reactor experiment (similar to ours with graphite, this used heavy water) - so they could design a reactor knowing critical mass requirements with their chosen moderator - this is described in the report by Dr Nagano at the Navy Park meeting in July 1942

a prototype reactor - it used the fuel and heavy water from the previous experiment in part - at Konan - this reactor was used until 1948 by the Russians with some of its Korean staff - and it was first described open source in Japan's Secret War (now in rewrite - and I am helping the author with the technical interpretation of archival materials he and others have found)

a first generation submarine reactor design - 12,000 hp more or less - and no less than three were built - but only one likely ever got fueled. The third was not far along, but the second was siezed in 1945 and sent to Russia - which interestingly adopted this same size (12,500 hp) for its first generation submarine reactors - but that was a different technology.

The Japanese tried to make natural uranium reactors work - only France ever tried that for a submarine outside Japan. Sub reactors otherwise use very highly enriched U-235 - higher than bomb grade - to achieve high power density and low cost (by not needing heavy water by the ton).
There is some evidence they got one to work - for a short period. At that time materials could not work with high temperatures found in modern sub reactors with highly enriched fuel - so they needed a lower pressure lower temperature design. But they DID trade with Germany in zirconium - an alloy ONLY used for reactor fuel elements - and something still used ONLY that way. IF Germany and Japan didn't need this alloy - why did they invent it and trade in it at great diffiiculty during the war (see MAGIC intercepts tracking it)? If they did need it - what for?

(in reply to ChezDaJez)

Post #: 215