100 kT is wet firecracker, indeed.
Here is the current arsenal of France, which itself is only a small nuclear power against the USA, Russia, and soon (or already?) China
http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/ ... ance.shtml
Each SNLE carries an arsenal equivalent to 14
Megaton (16 M45 missiles).
Each missile has 6 heads of 150 kT
The Rafales already carry air / ground heads of 300 kT.
I remind you that Hiroshima was 20 kT.
A SNLE can start a nuclear fire roughly equivalent to
1000 Hiroshima.
But all of this weaponry can be destroyed in mid-flight.
This is the whole strategy of anti-missile missiles and now directed beam weapons, especially spatial, developed by the US.
France recently presented ITER and Mégajoule as two major advances for thermonuclear fusion energy
civil. It is not so. The army wanted these projects.
http://www.transfert.net/a9486
The Megajoule laser, under construction at the Center for Scientific and Technical Studies of Aquitaine (Cesta) located at Barp (near Bordeaux), constitutes the main component of this program. According to public information, this equipment is intended for the development of the nuclear weapons of the future, airborne nuclear warheads (TNA) for the Rafale and oceanic nuclear warheads (TNO) for future M51 missiles. Research undertaken should also make it possible to understand the mechanisms necessary for the realization of thermonuclear bombs of "low power", therefore usable on the battlefield! Estimated at 6 billion francs (0,9 billion euros) in 1994, the overall cost of the Megajoule laser has more than doubled since. In 2002, it amounted to 2,137 billion euros. It is scheduled to enter effective service in 2011
We are swimming in delirium.
Megajoule is the thermonuclear primer by laser beam compression.
Same for ITER which amounts to € 15 billion: it is a thermonuclear fusion lab that does not say its name: it is a thermonuclear plasma confiner to study fusion reactions, very little known in their mechanisms today.
The Ricans are on another path (Z-Machine) which is a thermonuclear primer by magnetic compression.
The big current dream is to have thermonuclear bombs with non-fissionable initiator (ie "detonator" without atomic bomb).
At the time of writing, I am wondering if the Americans have not already arrived. Because there has been scientific radio silence on the Z-Machine for a few years.
