Zhu Jingyuan gave his own decision, and the courtiers led by Zhu Zhaoxie solemnly agreed.

Then Zhu Zhaoxie saw that Zhu Jingyuan did not raise more questions about the report, so he raised a question that had been brewing for a long time:

"Your Majesty, Yubayashi Zuowei is ready to apply for a batch of old warships for nuclear tests in the marine environment to test the strike effect of fission weapons on battleships."

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

Zhu Jingyuan is slightly sensitive to marine nuclear testing.

Under normal circumstances, after the bench and the airdrop of nuclear explosions, there should be a sea test.

In the case that the Ming Dynasty has its own powerful navy and also has to participate in naval operations, this kind of experiment is of course very necessary.

After the end of World War II, in order to determine the lethality of fission weapons to the navy and warships, Zhu Jingyuan's previous life conducted two sea nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

In the air and underwater, a bomb of the same type as the Split Fat Man was detonated to observe the impact of the nuclear explosion on surface ships.

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

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

The flagship of the fleet for the observation experiment was located on the aircraft carrier Shangri-La.

Zhu Jingyuan also happened to be very interested in naval ships in his previous life, so he also learned about the causes and consequences of this incident.

Judging by the results of the tests, the effect of an air explosion at a certain distance above the surface of the water on the direct destruction of the battleship itself does not look significant.

There were "only" five battleships directly sunk, one light cruiser, two destroyers, two transports.

The maximum distance between a ship that was directly sunk and the point of explosion was 690 meters.

Fourteen ships were badly damaged.

Most of these warships were concentrated within a kilometer of the explosion point.

At the same time, most of the warships located within a thousand meters of the explosion point were also seriously damaged.

Only the battleship Nagato remained largely intact -

The surface of the steel is like a wax figure that is beginning 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, which was 1,800 meters away and was ignited by photothermal radiation with ammunition and fuel.

On the other hand, even if it is an air explosion used to hit buildings and personnel, it will cause warships within a radius of 1,000 meters to lose their combat capability and cause serious damage.

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

In other words, the direct killing radius of a nuclear bomb of about 20,000 tons to a traditional warship is about one kilometer.

For carriers with large amounts of fuel and bombs, the range can be expanded to two kilometers.

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

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

The steel battleship itself, if strong enough, can even remain largely intact within a kilometer.

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

The landing ship, which was responsible for dropping nuclear bombs, vaporized and disappeared on the spot after the explosion.

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

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

The Nagato, which was largely unharmed in the first air explosion, sank within a day of the second nuclear explosion.

Ships within a radius of one kilometer were damaged more directly than an air explosion.

At worst, the hull is twisted and deformed, and at worst, it is directly torn and sunk.

Based on the experience of these two nuclear explosions, there are advantages to using nuclear bombs to strike ships and naval vessels, both air explosions and underwater explosions.

It is better to destroy the battleship directly by an underwater explosion, and the probability of direct sinking is of course higher.

The range of air explosion is larger, the killing effect on personnel is better, and the effect of disarming and combat effectiveness is better.

Although the battleship that was directly hit by the explosion actually has no repair value, it can be dragged to a suitable place for disposal after the war.

Generally speaking, if a nuclear bomb is used to attack a battleship, even if the error of the attack is as large as one kilometer, it can sink and paralyze several warships with a single nuclear bomb.

With a huge margin of error of one kilometer, it is difficult to miss even with conventional bombs that are completely unguided, with conventional 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, or even thrown directly into the sky.

Once a modern steel battleship capsizes, it will basically enter the countdown to sinking, and there is no possibility of survival if it is thrown away.

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

When guided weapons mature, anti-ship missiles with nuclear charges are the best weapon for striking large surface ships.

For the traditional fleets of World War II, they even had the opportunity to destroy the entire fleet with a single nuclear bomb while maintaining a dense formation.

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

No matter how powerful a warship is, it will not be able to withstand the attack of a nuclear explosion.

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

Navy ships only need to be able to sail the ocean and be able to carry and project such weapons.

So the Corn Emperor abandoned 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 dare to really use nuclear weapons as conventional weapons.

Until the moment of the disintegration and death of Red Lucia, not a single nuclear weapon was fired in the war.

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

Red Lucia and the United States, Cold War-era rivals, were to some extent mutually restrictive.

The presence of one side makes the other side afraid to expand the war easily.

The early fission weapons were too heavy to actually destroy all of the opponent's native cities and military installations, and only made the relationship between mortal enemies clear.

In the later period, both sides' nuclear arsenals were too large to kill the entire population of the other side, but enough to destroy the other court.

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

However, these experiences of previous lives cannot be directly used as the code of conduct of the Ming Dynasty.

Because the situation in the two worlds is very different.

The Ming Dynasty should consider more seriously how to use nuclear weapons in conventional warfare.

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

Zhu Jingyuan was very worried about the nuclear contamination of the ocean by the early nuclear explosion......

The Americans' marine nuclear tests were conducted in the western Pacific Ocean, at least 6,000 kilometers away from the US mainland.

The incident of a certain country in later generations discharging nuclear sewage into the ocean also left a deep impression on Zhu Jingyuan.

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

In his previous life, Zhu Jingyuan did not know what impact the United States had on the ocean with dozens of nuclear tests.

But as you can imagine, there must be some level of pollution.

The Americans still blew up enriched uranium.

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

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

Enriched uranium is thrown directly at sea vessels, not knowing what will happen.

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

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

But the Ming Dynasty now has coastlines in the world's four oceans......

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

Going to these two places for experiments?

This practice is so outrageous that it is definitely impossible to hide it when you go to do experiments.

At least not right now.

What's more, Zhu Jingyuan has the idea of turning the mainland of Taixi into his own vassal state.

It's not good to really conduct experiments with a lot of radiation off the coast of Taixi.

It is best to wait for Daming's technology to be 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 replied directly to Zhu Zhaoxie:

"Let's put off the matter of marine nuclear testing for the time being.

"The world's seawater is interconnected, and nuclear fuel that cannot fully react will definitely fall into the seawater.

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

"We don't know exactly what the consequences will be......

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

"At the same time, in-depth research, the impact of nuclear contamination on the sea and land.

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

"The impact should be inevitable, 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 inland of the 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 also felt that Zhu Jingyuan's words made sense.

After Zhu Jingyuan's advance advice, after various early irradiation experiments, the relevant generals and craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty were even very profound about radiation.

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

Even after the nuclear explosion, the Navy personnel boarded the sunken warship again and carried out fire extinguishing and decontamination work......

Some of the Geiger counters used by American soldiers could not even measure the radiation response of plutonium.

The result, of course, was that a large group of soldiers were contaminated with the remnants of the radiation.

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

But the quest to reduce pollution is in the right direction.

So Zhu Zhaoxie honestly bowed down and agreed.

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

In fact, Zhu Jingyuan is more concerned about this report.

The main thing about the nuclear test is that it has been successful.

The subsequent usage arrangements can be regarded as ready-made.

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

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

Because the content itself is very large, Zhu Zhaoxie has taken longer to prepare.

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

Daming's new element project, which began at the end of the second year of Ankang, has lasted for thirteen years now.

The scale of the facilities and industries that have been prepared and built will certainly be much larger than the Manhattan Project, which lasted more than three years in total.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the Manhattan Project began, it went to great lengths to obtain enough uranium, and Daming was well prepared from the beginning.

On this basis, Daming also directly skipped the early gas diffusion 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.

With the same power supply, Daming's enriched uranium production rate 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-239 have been built and 16 more are under construction.

When fully completed, the total number will be equal to the number of similar reactors built in the United States and Lucia combined.

At present, the accumulation of weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium is enough to produce more than 200 fission bombs.

This is still the accumulation of long-term maintenance operation of the industrial chain and production reactor without working at full speed before the successful test explosion experiment.

Now that the test explosion experiment has been successful, the relevant production line and reactor will move from maintaining to full production.

The subsequent production speed will be greatly improved.

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

The current rate of production is four fission bombs per month.

It is expected that by the beginning of next year, the rate will be increased to more than 10 pieces per month.

If there is no limit, by the end of next year, it will be able to increase to more than 100 per month.

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

Otherwise, the Ming Dynasty would have been able to build tens of thousands of atomic bombs within ten years.

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

In the future, when the atomic bomb is dismantled, the nuclear fuel will not be used up to build a nuclear reactor.

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

Enriched uranium from Lucia's dismantled atomic bomb was to be imported for fuel......

(End of chapter)