Let’s take the Poseidon apart
A phantasmagoric weapon is going crazy in the Italian newspapers which, according to a Russian broadcast, could detonate 500 meters, causing a 300 meters high tsunami, fantastic animals and where to find them. So, I decided to take it apart.
DISCLAIMER: there are and have existed torpedoes armed with nuclear warheads. Both for the purpose of demolishing port cities, and for the purpose of destroying hidden submarines at great depths, where torpedoes cannot reach or function well (due to the density of the water which distorts the sounds, and more). I am not denying that the Russians possess nuclear torpedoes: I am analyzing the specifications given by Russian TV.
1) 500Mt?
The first point is the power announced by Russian TV. According to them, it is an object of 500Mt. People are led to believe it because they think that Teller-Ulam's design allows for the construction of thermonuclear atomic bombs of arbitrary power.
The problem with this estimate is that yes, theoretically, if the exploding mixture were always contained in the same space, it would be possible. But this design was born before, in Bikini, the Americans discovered that what matters is the "nuclear section", that is, they built a bomb that according to them was 5Mt, and instead, by calculation error, it became almost three times more 'powerful.
This means one thing: in reality you cannot build thermonuclear "of arbitrary power": at some point it will happen that all the fuel has already been burned by the consequences of the initial explosion.
This is also due to the fact that the Teller-Ulam design relies heavily on a reflection of a certain type of neutron, which to exist must rely on the integrity of the bomb, which however no longer exists beyond 500ns. So there are physical limits. It is not yet known how big the maximum buildable bomb is in practice, but almost everyone agrees that 100Mt is a good estimate of the maximum power.
To say that, with a REALLY innovative design, there is a 500Mt bomb it is necessary at least to have it tested. There are no such tests. The most powerful test made was the Tzar Bomba, which reached 57Mt. It was designed for 100, but was tested for less, as the test would hardly be feasible. So in reality we assume that we can reach 100Mt.
It is hardly plausible that 500Mt bombs exist.
2) Tsunami from 300 meters?
Even assuming that the Russians have put a 100Mt bomb in the warhead, it must be understood that 100Mt are, in energy terms, the equivalent of an eighth degree earthquake on the Richter scale. Except that the earthquake lasts longer (yes, many natural events exceed the "power" of mankind by whole orders of magnitude), and shakes a much larger area.
Do we know the tsunamis caused by an 8 richter earthquake? Yeah. Was it devastating? Yeah. Were they 300 meters more waves? No.
Someone needs to explain to the Russians that when volumes of water move, the numbers grow with the CUBE of size. A wave three hundred meters long and thousands of KM in length implies quantities of energy much larger than 100Mt. And also of 500Mt.
In reality, nuclear tests show very few tsunami effects. When the Bikini bomb, which was 15 meters long, exploded, it did not obtain significant tsunamis against the surrounding atolls, which in fact were evacuated by the inhabitants to escape from the radiation.
There is therefore no literature on tsunamis caused by nuclear explosions. Moreover, the tsunami is a complex phenomenon that requires a large mechanical wave on the seabed. Krakatoa did, but it was not a simple explosion: it was a volcanic chamber several km in size that blew up.
It is hardly plausible to think that a nuclear explosion will cause a tsunami of that size, and there is no literature on tsunamis caused by underwater nuclear tests.
Would he erase England? Um … no.
In England there are mountains higher than 300m:
in reality england is quite a mountainous place, and the arrangement would save London:
Furthermore, we note that in order to make the speech work, the Russians have parked Ireland elsewhere, or have downsized it. So everyone is good at destroying England.
3) Tsunami of radioactive water?
In general, there are mountains higher than 300m in the UK. So a tsunami would hardly cover it all. Anyway, let's just assume that it happens. In that case, the problem would be sodium chloride contamination, which would make the land difficult to farm, and it would take years of rain to clean everything up.
What about radioactivity? Nuclear tests conducted show that if the blast remains confined under water, radioactivity is not as devastating a problem as required. The reason is that the water stops the propagation of radiation, therefore the primary radiations (those emitted by the device) struggle to produce secondary radioactive elements. They produce, but not that many.
A mountain of water 300 meters high and as long as England, in terms of volume, is huge. If we dilute the radioactivity of such an explosion into such a gigantic volume, we don't get any noticeable effects.
Moreover, the underwater tests do not show the creation of relevant tsunamis, but I have already said this.
In Bikini the problem was the aerial fallout, but it wasn't an underwater explosion. Here you have to decide: do you want the tsunami or the radiation? If you want the huge tsunami you have to detonate the bomb below, and you won't have much radiation. If you want radiation you have to blow it up high, and you won't get much tsunami, assuming you have it, which has never been tested before.
It is hardly plausible that a single bomb, even 500mt, could make a mountain 300m high of water, more than a thousand km long, radioactive.
4) Seventy knots at a depth of one thousand meters.
It is not clear whether they are seventy knots or seventy km per hour. They are two very different things, because at seventy knots we begin to notice cavitation phenomena of the propellers. It is difficult if not impossible that a torpedo equipped with a propeller (the most modern work by water jet, such as the Moray eels) can reach seventy knots without causing a noise heard since Mars.
Let's even say seventy km per hour, which is about thirty knots.
A thousand meters deep? Yes, Russian submarines existed and do exist capable of descending to that depth. The problem is that to do this you need a LARGE hull, built with double bulkheads, and there are structural limits for which, at a thousand meters, the submarine can barely move and take on water with a certain ease, in the propeller compartment. So the stay can't really be that long and the mobility isn't very high. Even the maximum speed at 1000m depth is very limited.
Russian submarines do it to escape attacks, but generally under 500Mt for torpedoes it is very difficult to get there (unless you use a nuclear warhead and purposely detonate it above the submarine), so only in extreme cases they would drop below 6 / 700 meters.
A thing that travels with only one "bottle" (judging by its size) at 35 knots at 1000m depth is highly implausible. That it can compensate for the internal and external pressure (we have to run an atomic engine in there, complete with turbines and alternators) without being much larger and without having compensation systems is very difficult.
A thing of that size, complete with a reactor, turbine and alternator that travels at a depth of 1000 meters at 70km per hour, is practically a wet dream of Putin. At 70 knots it is practically a fairy tale.
Then there is a problem: the altitude at which underwater objects are invisible to sonar is much higher, practically below the surface. This is because it is higher than normal sonar, and because the reflection of the surface adds confusion.
If he wants to be invisible, he doesn't do it at 70km / h at 1000 meters. Impatient.
5) The torpedo is invisible.
a lot of submarines are close to invisibility. But the countermeasures that are taken are very sophisticated, and they require space. They require space because the propagation of waves is a geometric phenomenon, and therefore it is necessary, again, to have certain dimensions, certain cavities, a double bottle structure, and a whole series of things.
A whole series of things that such a small object cannot do. He can do his best, sure, but "invisible" for such a large object, equipped with a turbine, alternator and nuclear power plant, he knows a lot of bullshit.
It is too big to be invisible, but also too small to be truly invisible.
Too big because it offers a huge reflective section, too small because it cannot contain countermeasures and design to be invisible.
Moreover, in the simulation (from which they removed Ireland, which would disturb the famous tsunami), the bomb would explode towards the northwest. But as you know, towards the north west (in Scotland) it is precisely the place where the nuclear fleet of British submarines is concentrated. That is, it is an EXTREMELY well-guarded stretch of sea, full of sensors, sonar and all kinds of devilry. It is implausible that such a big thing passes us.
In general, the invisibility must be tested: the new submarine is sent to warm areas, such as the Baltic (once they did it also in the Gulf of Taranto) and you can observe the time it takes to be sighted. The experiment ends with the sighting. For example, from the accident below they understood that in certain areas it is better not to emerge.
There are no tests of this type for this kind of torpedoes.
It is implausible that a metal object so large, but too small to implement countermeasures, passes through that sea area without being seen. And there are no known tests.
6) Liquid metal nuclear engine?
There were Soviet submarines that had particular reactors: instead of using water as a cooling liquid and heat transfer, they used liquid metals. Liquid means that by using some very dense metals and with low melting temperatures, water could be replaced with a liquid metal (or metal alloy) around 200 ° C. The advantages are obvious: the thermal capacity is enormous, the risk of steam explosion is reduced, and so on.
These reactors have a small problem: they cannot be shut down without throwing them away. Since the pipes are long and complex, the metal must remain molten inside the pipe. If it cools, it solidifies and the tube becomes unusable. So the submarines that used this technique had to keep the reactors on CONTINUOUS, and therefore produce energy continuously.
And so they had to continuously use this energy they produced. When they were still in port, the surrounding waters could be seen warming from the satellites. This also implied that the submarines were CONTINUOUSLY attended by humans, in order to avoid engine accidents, or at least to intervene in the event of an accident.
Building torpedoes with these engines is equivalent to building many small continuously active nuclear power plants. Logistic nonsense.
The supply of many torpedoes like these is absolutely implausible.
7) The torpedo cannot be stopped.
Implausible. We are talking about an object whose dimensions make it a target for other torpedoes. It is not clear how it is said that it cannot be stopped: there are nuclear torpedoes, which are made to devastate an area and produce a very strong mechanical wave that can cancel a torpedo or a submarine even several kilometers away. Why it is not possible to apply to a torpedo the size of a small submarine the same defenses that apply to small submarines, they know only on Russian TV. Their torpedo has the same dimensions (about twenty meters) of a koerano-midget submarine:
Which lies and sinks quietly. In general, that "torpedo" is simply an unmanned "midget submarine":
Which honestly, it's not a huge threat.
Moreover, a submarine with a small crew at least would be intelligent, this is stupid and can be driven with satellite and underwater maps. In short, he would not react. At a guess, with a similar range of use, 9 out of ten would be captured or sunk.
Moreover, having no human crews, he must navigate using GLONASS, the GPS network of the Russians. Which, for an automatic system that has to travel thousands of miles, makes it extremely jammable.
In general, I wonder why nobody questions wiki pages like this one
where the specification list of this weapon might fit well in the Harry Potter books. It is, literally, delirium.
8 Am I saying there are no weapons like this?
No. Certainly there have been nuclear torpedoes, already in the "remote" past:
so it's not extravagant or new, as an idea. It was generally planned to destroy sea ports or refineries using these weapons. It would not be strange a two Mt version designed to destroy coastal cities.
Putting a Tsar Bomba instead has some "logistical problems": it must contain its own explosives, and with all the explosives a Tsar bomb weighs ~ 28 tons. When the poseidon weighs a maximum of 100 tons and we put 28 tons in a single point of the hull, which is 20 meters, its seaworthiness, let's face it, lies in the realm of harry potter.
Putting a 500mt thing into it, even if it were possible, is Expelliarmus in its almost pure state. And what happens if it doesn't explode due to an accident? Does the enemy capture the top of the top of your nuclear technology?
Let's make a more plausible configuration: it is a "midget submarine"
Which, as you can see on the page, Italy also had:
And that the Soviets captured during the IIWW.
They carry raiders and the explosives they need. Maybe even small atomic ones, why not?
In this case it would be a Midget Submarine, with a very long range (if it really has an atomic engine), a dozen crew including two pilots, and a decent space to contain bombs (including nuclear ones) with which to undermine ports and infrastructures. .
This makes more sense. And it would be very dangerous. BUT not in the sense of Russian TV, and not in the sense that it gives him a girl with an unlikely hairstyle and a “lumberjack-chic” jacket.
What I mean is that that weapon probably exists, it's probably dangerous, but the specs mentioned on Russian TV are just ridiculous, because it would be great for doing anything else.
Also, if you want to take a large nuclear power unit to an open ocean stretch, you just need an ICBM, or a normal boat. There is no need to conceive such a "torpedo".
