Daming 1805

Zhu Jingyuan made his own decision, and the courtiers headed by Zhu Zhaoxie solemnly agreed.

Then Zhu Zhaoxie saw that Zhu Jingyuan did not raise any more questions about the report, so he raised a question that had been brewing for a long time:
"Your Majesty, Habayashi Zuowei is going to apply for a batch of old warships for nuclear tests in the ocean environment, to test the effect of fission weapons on warships."

When Zhu Jingyuan saw this question, his thoughts obviously paused for a few seconds.

Zhu Jingyuan is slightly sensitive to ocean nuclear tests.

Under normal circumstances, after the rig and airdrop nuclear explosions, ocean trials should begin.

Under the circumstances that Ming has its own powerful navy and also participates in naval operations, this kind of experiment is of course necessary.

In the United States of Zhu Jingyuan’s previous life, after the end of World War II, in order to determine the lethality of fission weapons on the navy and warships, two sea nuclear tests were conducted on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

In the air and underwater respectively, a variable bomb of the same type as the Fatty Crack was detonated to observe the impact of the nuclear explosion on the surface ships.

This is Operation Crossroads, which is very familiar to Navy fans.

A total of 95 ships participated in the test, among which Nagato of Japan, Prince Eugen of Germany, and Saratoga of the United States are more famous in later generations.

The flagship of the fleet to observe the experiment is located on the aircraft carrier Shangri-La.

Zhu Jingyuan happened to be very interested in naval ships in his previous life, so he also knew the cause and effect of this incident.

Judging from the test results, the direct destruction effect of the air blast at a certain distance above the water surface on the battleship itself does not seem to be significant.

There were "only" five battleships sunk directly, one light cruiser, two destroyers, and two transport ships.

The furthest distance between a directly sunk warship and the point of explosion is 690 meters.

Fourteen warships were badly damaged.

Most of these warships are concentrated within 1000 meters of the explosion point.

At the same time, most of the warships located within 1000 meters of the explosion point were also severely damaged.

Only the battleship Nagato remained largely intact——

It means that the steel on the surface is like a wax figure that has begun to melt, but the structure and interior of the hull are basically intact.

Regardless of the people inside...

The closest to the explosion point was the Saratoga, 800 meters away, the ammunition and fuel were ignited by the light and heat radiation.

On the other hand, even the air blasts used to strike buildings and personnel will cause warships within a radius of 1000 meters to lose their combat capabilities and suffer serious damage.

For the navy, the loss of combat effectiveness of a battleship on the battlefield is actually no different from sinking.

In other words, the air explosion of a nuclear bomb of about [-] tons has a direct damage radius of about one kilometer to a traditional warship.

For carriers carrying large quantities of fuel and bombs, the range can be extended to two kilometers.

In a sense, the lethality of the air blast to the fleet can be regarded as a soft "soft kill".

The killing effect on shipboard equipment and personnel is very significant.

If the steel battleship itself is strong enough, it can even remain basically intact within one kilometer.

The underwater nuclear explosion in the second experiment had a completely different effect.

The landing ship responsible for dropping the nuclear bomb vaporized and disappeared on the spot after the explosion.

The battleship 170 meters away was directly overturned by the explosion on the spot, and then sucked into the sky by the air.

A total of ten warships of various types, including two battleships and an aircraft carrier, sank in the following hours.

The Nagato, which was largely unharmed by the first blast, sank within a day of the second blast.

The warships within a radius of one kilometer suffered more direct damage than the air blast.

In the slightest, the hull is distorted and deformed, and in the severest case, it is directly torn and sunk.

According to the experience of these two nuclear explosions, using nuclear bombs to attack ships and naval ships, the two methods of air explosion and underwater explosion have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Underwater explosions are more effective in destroying warships directly, and the probability of direct sinking is of course higher.

The airburst has a larger killing range, a better killing effect on personnel, and a better disarming and combat effectiveness.

Although the warship that was directly exploded has no repair value, it can be dragged to a suitable place for disposal after the war.

Generally speaking, if nuclear bombs are used to attack warships, even if the error of the attack is as large as one kilometer, several warships can be sunk and paralyzed with one nuclear bomb.

With a huge error range of one kilometer, even if you use a traditional bomb without guidance at all, it is difficult to miss it with a traditional aircraft.

If it is hit by a nuclear bomb within 100 meters, even a battleship of tens of thousands of tons will be directly overturned by the shock wave and water column, and even thrown directly into the sky.

Once a modern steel warship capsizes, it basically enters the countdown to sinking, and it is even more impossible for those who are thrown into the air to survive.

If it is directly hit by a nuclear bomb, the entire battleship will be directly shattered or even melted.

When guided weapons mature, nuclear-charged anti-ship missiles are the best weapon for attacking large surface ships.

For the traditional fleet of World War II, when they sailed in a dense formation, they even had a chance to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

By this time, the offensive and defensive capabilities of modern weapons and naval vessels were completely out of balance.

No matter how powerful a warship is, it cannot withstand the attack of a nuclear explosion.

According to the thinking of the Corn Emperor in the previous life of Red Lucia, if nuclear weapons are used as conventional weapons, any large surface ship is a living coffin at sea.

Naval ships just need to be able to go out to sea and be able to carry and deliver such weapons.

So Emperor Corn gave up aircraft carriers and battleships, and only kept cruisers and nuclear submarines.

It's just that Red Lucia has always shouted loudly, but she doesn't really dare to use nuclear weapons as conventional weapons.

Until the moment when Red Lucia disintegrated and died, no nuclear weapon was fired in the war.

At the same time, after the end of World War II, the United States has never used nuclear weapons.

Red Lucia and the United States, a pair of rivals in the Cold War era, restrict each other to a certain extent.

The existence of one of them makes the other dare not easily expand the war.

The early fission weapons were too heavy to truly destroy all the opponent's local cities and military facilities, and would only clarify the relationship between the deadly enemy.

In the later period, the nuclear arsenals of both sides were too large, perhaps not enough to kill all the population of the other side, but enough to destroy the other side's court.

So neither side has the guts to dare to launch a full-scale nuclear war.

But these past life experiences cannot be directly used as Daming's code of conduct.

Because the situation in the two worlds is completely different.

Daming needs to think more seriously about how to use nuclear weapons in conventional warfare.

But when it comes to specific marine nuclear tests, Zhu Jingyuan doesn't want them to do it right now.

Zhu Jingyuan is very worried about the nuclear pollution of the ocean caused by the early nuclear explosions...

The marine nuclear tests of the Americans were all carried out in the Western Pacific Ocean, at least [-] kilometers away from the continental United States.

Zhu Jingyuan was also deeply impressed by the discharge of nuclear sewage into the ocean by a certain country in later generations.

In the early nuclear weapons, the fuel utilization rate was very low, and most of the fuel in the experiment would be directly thrown into the ocean.

Zhu Jingyuan did not know in his previous life that the United States conducted dozens of nuclear tests in the ocean, and what impact it would have on the ocean.

But it is conceivable that there must be a certain degree of pollution.

What the Americans blew up was enriched uranium.

Although seawater is actually the sewer of the world, the elements in the ocean are very rich, and of course uranium is indispensable.

It's just that uranium in seawater mainly exists in the form of compounds or oxides.

The enriched uranium was thrown directly into the sea ship, and I don't know what will happen.

Therefore, in Zhu Jingyuan's view, it is best not to conduct ocean nuclear tests for the time being.

Even if you want to do it, you have to go to the place farthest from your homeland like the Americans in the previous life.

But Ming now has coastlines in all four oceans of the world...

The ocean farthest from Daming seems to be the North Sea and the Baltic Sea in the northwest of Thailand.

Go to these two places to conduct experiments?

This approach is too outrageous, and it must be impossible to hide it from doing experiments.

At least there is no way to do it now.

What's more, Zhu Jingyuan had an idea to turn the mainland of the western and western countries into his own vassal state.

It's really not good to conduct experiments with a lot of radiation in the coastal waters of Taixi.

It's best to wait for Daming's technology to become more mature and make the reaction as complete as possible, and then find as remote a sea area as possible to experiment.

So Zhu Jingyuan directly replied to Zhu Zhaoxie:
"Let's take a break from the ocean nuclear test for now.

"The sea water in the world is connected, and the nuclear fuel that cannot be fully reacted will definitely fall into the sea water.

"Most of the warships that have been directly bombed by nuclear explosions will sink into the sea or drift around.

"What exactly the consequences of this will be, we have not yet figured out at all...

"Let the relevant craftsmen continue to optimize the design of the bomb, improve the reaction efficiency of nuclear fuel, and reduce pollution.

"At the same time, in-depth research has been carried out on the impact of nuclear pollution on oceans and land.

"When we have a relatively accurate and comprehensive understanding of the situation on the other side, we will consider ocean nuclear tests.

"The impact should be unavoidable, but we want to keep it as low as possible.

"For the time being, nuclear tests on land will only be carried out in the interior of Tiannan Continent, and other places will not be involved for the time being."

Zhu Zhaoxie was a little surprised, but after thinking about it, he felt that Zhu Jingyuan's words made sense.

After Zhu Jingyuan's advance instructions and various early irradiation experiments, the relevant generals and craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty even had a very deep understanding of radiation.

Unlike the Americans in history, when conducting nuclear tests at sea, their understanding of radiation was very superficial.

Even after the nuclear explosion, people from the navy boarded the sunken warship again to carry out fire fighting and decontamination work...

Some Geiger counters used by American soldiers cannot even detect the radiation reaction of plutonium.

The result, of course, was a large group of soldiers all contaminated with radioactive residue.

The current Daming, of course, cannot avoid nuclear pollution at all, and it will certainly not be able to completely avoid it in the future.

But the pursuit of reducing pollution is entirely in the right direction.

So Zhu Zhaoxie obediently agreed.

Zhu Jingyuan also put down the report documents of the two nuclear tests and picked up the overall report on the situation of the atomic energy industry system.

In fact, Zhu Jingyuan cared more about this report.

Regarding the nuclear test, I mainly know that it is successful.

Subsequent usage arrangements can be regarded as off-the-shelf.

The development status of the entire industry, as well as the future development plan and direction, is what I need to continue to pay attention to, continue to pay attention to and guide.

This report on the atomic energy industry is longer, more detailed and accurate than the reports on the two nuclear tests.

Because the content itself is very large, Joo So-seop took longer to prepare.

The first part of the report is about the production system of fission weapons.

Daming's new element project has been going on for 13 years since the end of the second year of Ankang.

The scale of the facilities and industries prepared and built will definitely be much larger than the Manhattan Project which lasted more than three years.

First of all, from uranium mining to the refining of enriched uranium, the entire nuclear fuel production chain has been built in two complete sets, which are backup and replacement for each other.

The production efficiency of the scale of each of the two sets is estimated to be comparable to the full set prepared by Americans in previous lives.

Daming has also established two completely separate independent mining areas in Tiannan Continent.

In addition to the earliest large mining area in the south, the northernmost mining area in Tiannan Continent was also completed and put into production two years ago.

In other areas ruled by the Ming Dynasty, a whole round of uranium mine exploration was also carried out, and the main uranium mines in Zhu Jingyuan's previous life have basically been discovered.

Daming can continue to expand uranium production capacity at any time.

When the Manhattan Project started, it took a lot of effort to obtain enough uranium ore, and Daming was fully prepared from the beginning.

On this basis, Daming also directly skipped the early gas diffusion method of uranium enrichment, and directly followed the centrifugal uranium enrichment route of the Cold War era.

The actual production efficiency is five to ten times higher than that of the gas diffusion method.

Under the same power supply, the enriched uranium production speed of Ming Dynasty can be several times faster than that of the early days of the United States.

Sixteen production and reprocessing reactors for the production of weapons-grade plutonium-[-] have been built, and another sixteen are under construction.

After all are completed, the total number will reach the sum of similar reactors built in the United States and Lucia in history.

The weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium accumulated so far are enough to produce more than [-] fission bombs.

This is still accumulated over a long period of time when the industrial chain and production piles are not working at full speed before the explosion test is successful.

Now that the test explosion experiment has been successful, the relevant production lines and reactors will switch from a maintenance state to a full-speed production state.

Subsequent production speed will be greatly improved.

After the successful nuclear explosion test, the finished fission bomb assembly plant also shifted from trial production to full-speed production.

The current production rate is four fission bombs per month.

It is estimated that by the beginning of next year, the speed will be increased to more than ten pieces per month.

If there are no restrictions, by the end of next year, it will be able to increase to more than [-] per month.

At that time, Zhu Jingyuan will have to consider whether to limit the production speed.

Otherwise, the Ming Dynasty could produce tens of thousands of atomic bombs within ten years.

Now Ming Dynasty needs to produce atomic bombs, but there is no need to build so many.

When it is phased out in the future, the atomic bombs will be dismantled, and nuclear fuel will be pumped out to build nuclear reactors.

The reactors in the United States in Zhu Jingyuan's previous life were still enriched with weapons-grade uranium until the new century, so that path dependence was formed.

To import enriched uranium from the atomic bomb that Lucia dismantled as fuel...