Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
dynamite and after he introduced a practical detonator
(Smil 2005a). Dynamite's velocity of detonation is as
much as 6.6 km/s, compared to about 400 m/s for gun-
powder (Urbanski 1967). Slower-acting and preferably
smokeless propellants needed for weapons were intro-
duced before 1900: gelatinized and extruded nitrocellu-
lose by Paul Vieille in 1884; Nobel's ballistite in 1887;
and the most powerful of all prenuclear explosives, cyclo-
trimethylenetrinitramine (cyclonite, commonly known
as RDX, Royal Demolition eXplosive, with a detona-
tion velocity of 8.7 km/s), made by Hans Henning in
1899.
Other new highly destructive weapons whose use
contributed to the unprecedented casualties of WW I
included machine guns, tanks, submarines, the first mili-
tary planes, including light bombers, and poisonous
gases. The two decades between the world wars brought
rapid development of battle tanks, fighter planes, and
long-range bombers and aircraft carriers; these were the
decisive weapons of WW II. The closing months of WW
II saw the deployment of two new prime movers—the
first gas turbines in flight and the first rocket engines, in
the German ballistic missile V-2—and of an entirely new
class of weapons, the first fission bomb, tested in July
1945. The increase in maximum destructive power be-
tween 1914 and 1945 was astonishing; 100-kg shells
fired by large WW I artillery guns had explosive energy
of about 400 MJ, and the two nuclear bombs dropped
on Japan in early August 1945 released, respectively,
52.5 TJ and 92.4 TJ (CCMD 1981).
Jet propulsion enabled the fastest fighter aircraft
to surpass the speed of sound in 1947 and eventually to
reach maximum velocities in excess of Mach 3. The post-
war arms race between the United States and the USSR
began with the assembly of more powerful fission bombs
to be carried by strategic bombers. The first fusion
bombs were tested in 1952 and 1953, and by the early
1960s the two antagonists were engaged in a spiraling
accumulation of intercontinental ballistic missiles. These
were not weapons of war. Their real purpose was to deter
use by the other side. But in order to achieve this objec-
tive, did the superpowers have to amass more than
20,000 nuclear warheads, some of them 3 OM more
powerful than the 1945 bombs (Smil 2006)? When
expressed in common units of TNT equivalents, the Hi-
roshima and Nagasaki bombs rated, respectively, 12.5 kt
and 22 kt. The most powerful thermonuclear bomb
tested by the USSR over the Novaya Zemlya on October
30, 1961, rated 58 Mt, equal to 4,600 Hiroshima
bombs. By 1990 the total power of U.S. and Soviet nu-
clear warheads surpassed 10 Gt.
Modern wars are waged with weaponry whose con-
struction requires some of the most energy-intensive
materials and whose deployment relies on continuous
flows of gasoline, kerosene, and electricity in order to en-
ergize the machines that carry them, and to equip and
provision the troops who operate them. The production
of special steels in heavy armored equipment typically
needs 40-50 MJ/kg, and the use of depleted uranium
for armor-piercing shells and enhanced armor protection
is much more energy-intensive. Aluminum, titanium, and
composite fibers, the principal construction materials of
modern aircraft, embody, respectively, 170-250 MJ/kg,
as much as 450 MJ/kg, and typically 100-150 MJ/kg.
The most powerful modern war machines are designed
for maximum performance, not for minimum energy
consumption. For example, the U.S. 60-t M1/A1
Abrams main battle tank, powered by a 1.1-MW AGT-
1500 Honeywell gas turbine, needs (depending on mis-
sion, terrain, and weather) 400-800 L/100 km. For
