Melting an Iceberg

[kanicbird]

Because the berg is so thin relative to its length and width, you’d probably have disperse the nukes in 144 one megaton packages, each buried under 300 feet of ice.

Wow, I would think more would be needed, but then again many ice blocks will be blown away and not melted, others will be vaporized and remove much of the heat, so I still think we would need more then 144 MT’s.

[oh_s]

@EmeraldGrue

You’d need a 1920’s-style death ray.

:ducks & runs:

                   Oi Cobber. 
                                    What do you think a ionised microwave cannon is?

[Squink]

@kanicbird

I still think we would need more then 144 MT’s.

Yeah, that was a calculation of the absolute minimum needed. It showed that a nuclear solution is feasible, but in real life, heat loss through the rising fireball and vaporized water would push the megatonage required up by a good big coefficient.

[Tuckerfan]

@Squink

Yeah, that was a calculation of the absolute minimum needed. It showed that a nuclear solution is feasible, but in real life, heat loss through the rising fireball and vaporized water would push the megatonage required up by a good big coefficient.

Nah, I mean after all, if NASA can send a bunch of guys up there to drill that far into an asteroid the size of Texas, drop a nuke down the hole, and then have it split the thing cleanly in two when it goes off, 144 warheads should be more than enough on something like an iceberg.

[David_Simmons]

@Tuckerfan

Nah, I mean after all, if NASA can send a bunch of guys up there to drill that far into an asteroid the size of Texas, drop a nuke down the hole, and then have it split the thing cleanly in two when it goes off, 144 warheads should be more than enough on something like an iceberg.

The problem is explosions, as was pointed out earlier, is that they blow things apart and don’t couple the available energy into the berg in such a way as to melt it. That’s a problem with the reactive material of the explosive itself. The explosive charge, or the reactive mass in the case of nuclear, has to be contained long enough for the chemical or nuclear reaction to reach all or the greatest possible fraction, of the active elements.

My computation of 136 km diameter ignored the interchange of energy between the berg and the environment. I don’t think that was a very good thing to ignore. It really doesn’t matter because no one is actually going to do the experiment asked about in the OP. If someone were to try it, the melting of an iceberg floating in the ocean is a lot more complicated than just putting the proper amount of energy into it and then standing back.

[Sam_Stone]

What would happen if something the size of B-15 rolled over? Would it create a Tsunami or something?

[danceswithcats]

Thanks Mangetout. Now I’ve got the blasted Rolling Stones stuck in my head.

[The_Cat]

Just for the record building a nuclear powerplant and “melting it down” would definetly not melt an iceberg the size of delaware althought it might melt a hole in it. Hitting the ice berg with a nuclear warhead would probably not melt an ice berg the size of the deleware. If you could somehow put the iceberg in direct contact with the great nuclear reactor in the sky we call the sun it would melt.