nuclear explosion
Sign in to saveAlso known as nuclear blast, thermonuclear explosion, atomic explosion
explosion that occurs as a result of rapid release of energy from a nuclear reaction (fission or fusion)
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A 23 kiloton tower shot called BADGER, fired on April 18, 1953, at the Nevada Test Site, as part of the Operation Upshot–Knothole nuclear test series. The Greenhouse George test early fireball. Upshot–Knothole Grable test (film)
A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device. Nuclear explosions are used in nuclear weapons and nuclear testing.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “nuclear explosion” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.