Is there Some New Technology to Test Small Nukes without their Fissile Cores
So that it looks like you are testing a Conventional Bomb but instead you are Testing the Detonating Mechanism
To Validate the Design
Since there is No Fissile Material involved
There will be No Spread of Radiation
Just a couple of posts before the DRDO cluster bomb post of mine , I had written a post where I mentioned RRCAT and BARC and importantly " minute pellet sized holy cow dung "
It seem a mod literally took it to be cow dung and deleted the post.
Firing mechanism testing is no big deal , infact let me assure you DRDO tech is on par with the best out there , when the por........ were running after medical kidney stone breaking machines all over the world to salvage the spark gaps , India was well ahead with the next generation iteration of the high voltage trigger mechanism. Since few years we use the latest generation tech at par with US . Miniaturisation is at the highest possible level.
I even posted pics related to that I believe somewhere else.
Coming to your questions what is point in testing a nuke without the fissile materials unless you are interested in testing the firing mechanism , the detonators the wave shapers the explosive lenses ie the whole setup minus the core. Some call it cold testing .
Por...... we're reportedly doing cold tests with Chinese supplied complete setup without the fissile materials , while back home series of cold tests at subscale level with Pu and surrogates was being done. One can do fullscale surrogate implosions in labs but not with Pu , however coupled with data from live tests etc , a correlation can be established between Pu and the surrogates ( extends to tamper, gases etc ) at subscale and fullscale implosion level between the 2 , and hence can accurately stimulate a real Pu implosion at all levels of scalability in lab conditions.
Understand the difference between subscale and subcritical tests , they are totally different.
Anyways
My attention was drawn when a nuclear establishment got a barrel rated at xxx kbar , for comparison the most powerful conventional military gun barrel is rated at a small fraction of the above.
Anyways
Again look at the work being done for radiograph , flash X ray , pulse power driven systems etc etc and also ICF ( if one is interested in the secondary stage , interest in pure fusion devices is a driving factor too )
Anyways
RRCAT is the most sanctioned R&D facility for a reason
Anyways
Hopefully you will get to read the post before it gets deleted
