Show fil Ci Def Th The subject of nu nuclear lEar weapons their effects and protection against them them can an become very technical and complicated We Ve are all fam familiar with the fact that nuclear bombs were exploded in Jap Japan n in 1945 They exploded at a great enough h height so that there was no local fallout Their ex explosive explosive explosive ex- ex plosive force was measured in terms of thousands of tons of TNT or more commonly called called called call call- ed kil kilotons tons KT The energy came from what is called fission atomic en energy which is the splitting process of a heavy element such as uranium that releases re releases releases re- re leases enormous amounts of energy In 1952 a thermonuclear weapon was exploded which released still more energy This increase came not from fission but from a new process called fusion To fuse anything is to join things together and what is fused in this process are the lighter chemical chemic l elements like hydrogen Physicists learned that by combining in a fused sense these lighter elements of our universe enormous amounts of energy and radiation were released In 1954 a still more powerful device was exploded by combining the processes process s of i fission I and and- fus fusion n in in ina a particular way In this way unfortunately considerably a greater amount of radioactive material is produced The explosive force from these type weapons is measured measured measured meas meas- in terms of millions of tons of TNT more commonly referred to in news reports as megatons MT l In test series to date explosions of 10 MT or more have been detonated |