Reply #8: I don't think that you can see the difference seismically [View All]

[tocqueville]

bury 1000 t of TNT (or whatever) or a 1 kt nuke and boom. The effect is the same except for radiation and initial heat.

The dominant effects of a nuclear weapon (the blast and thermal radiation) are the same physical damage mechanisms as conventional explosives, but the energy produced by a nuclear explosive is millions of times more per gram and the temperatures reached are in the tens of millions of degrees.

The energy of a nuclear explosive is initially released in the form of gamma rays and neutrons. When there is a surrounding material such as air, rock, or water, this radiation interacts with the material, rapidly heating it to an equilibrium temperature in about a microsecond. The hot material emits thermal radiation, mostly soft X-rays, which accounts for 75% of the energy of the explosion. In addition, the heating and vaporization of the surrounding material causes it to rapidly expand and the kinetic energy of this expansion accounts for almost all of the remaining energy


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_explosion


satellites will be able to detect increased radioactivity if there is a nuclear testing. The problem is that the spying nations won't say anything about it.

if they blew a nuke that near the ground, about 60 000 t of radioactive material would spread with the wind and could be detected. But since the ground is contaminated at the test site, a ground explosion with conventional explosives will spread radioactive material anyway.