Your tax dollars at work! Apparently the 1860's Plasma Cannon needs more, uh, refinement.
"...researchers accidentally blew a building apart... while testing a gun which acts like a Civil War cannon..."
Looks like the 'citizens watchdog group' that released this claim overstated their case.
NNSA is forbidden from conducting live tests with nuclear explosions and therefore must design proxy experiments using other explosives to estimate the effects of detonations on new materials. One such experiment resulted in higher than expected damage. There are alternatives to such experiments: to withdraw from the nuclear test ban treaty - in which case unpleasant surprises are likely to be rather larger - or to continue with these materials effects proxy experiments, which being experiments sometimes generate unforseen results. |
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