Oleg Zabluda's blog
Sunday, October 21, 2012
 
Mark 18 nuclear bomb, also known as the SOB or Super Oralloy [1] Bomb, was the highest yield (500 Kt) unboosted pure...
Mark 18 nuclear bomb, also known as the SOB or Super Oralloy [1] Bomb, was the highest yield (500 Kt) unboosted pure fission bomb produced by the US. Noted nuclear weapon designer Ted Taylor of the Project Orion [2], etc fame was the lead designer.

George Dyson, son of Freeman Dyson of the Project Orion, etc fame in his book "Turing's Cathedral" p.214, says that Ted Taylor designed it in part to show that fusion bombs were unnecessary, because the pure fission yield ought to be enough for anyone. But there was no stopping it.

90 Mark 18's were build, but almost immediately decommissioned, obsoleted by boosted fission and true fusion bombs.

Soviet analog, allegedly, was RDS-7 (500 Kt), never fully developed because it was obsoleted by Sakharov's boosted "Layer Cake" design (Joe-4/RDS-6s, 1953)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_18_nuclear_bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Taylor_(physicist)
http://books.google.com/books?id=9nvfmUS03c4C&pg=PP214

[1] code name for U-235

[2] https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/bmCaULpVR16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Taylor_(physicist)

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