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1->''"I find that people are always jumping to conclusions about nuclear reaction. Science fact and science fiction are not the same thing, not the same thing at all."''
2-->-- '''Dr. Jess Rogers''', ''Film/TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld''
3
4Both nuclear weapons and peaceful nuclear technology are enormously technical in nature. [[HollywoodScience Since Hollywood never lets boring facts get in the way of an engaging yarn]], this allows some truly mind-bending violations of physics to make it by most audiences. They can basically be summed up like so:
5!!Ideas that look good on paper:
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7[[foldercontrol]]
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9[[folder:Idea 1: My Nuke is GOING CRITICAL]]
10# Related to ReliablyUnreliableGuns and StuffBlowingUp, if something is nuclear, and something, ''anything'' happens to it, it's GoingCritical and gonna blow up like an atomic bomb. It doesn't matter if it's designed not to do that, it doesn't matter if it's not fissile enough to be used for an atomic bomb, it doesn't matter if it hasn't got enough material for critical mass, [[MadeOfExplodium it's gonna blow]].
11** In real life, a nuclear weapon requires precise conditions[[note]]The precise engineering of a nuclear weapon makes the best Swiss watch look like a flint knife in comparison.[[/note]] to achieve a full-scale explosion (mainly a sphere of conventional explosives being set off in unison around the nuclear mass, compressing it to supercriticality and initiating a nuclear reaction) while fictional nukes act [[HairTriggerExplosive like spheres filled with mega-nitroglycerin]]. Shooting, or even blowing up a real-life nuclear weapon with conventional explosives is likely to ''disable'' the warhead, not set it off.[[note]]The standard setup for a nuclear bomb is a sphere of weapons grade fissile material surrounded by conventional explosives. The explosives are directed inward in order to generate the necessary chain reaction. High precision engineering is required to get everything to come together properly; if things are off by even milliseconds, the yield will be dramatically reduced and it may fizzle entirely. In fact, partial detonation of the explosives will disable the nuclear weapon (but probably contaminate the area with radiation).[[/note]] Blunt force will not set off a nuclear weapon either, no matter how hard.
12*** In fact, [[http://archive.org/details/StaySafe1960 here's a film produced by the US Air Force back in 1960]] showing nuclear weapons being purposely dropped out of planes, set on fire, and otherwise subjected to movie-of-the-week hijinks to demonstrate that rough treatment of nuclear weapons does not result in said weapons detonating. It should be noted though, as the narrator repeatedly assures us, that these bombs do not actually contain radioactive material "so as not to waste this precious resource", defeating the point of the tests somewhat.
13** If a reactor does melt down or is going to melt down, the hero usually has to manually initiate a SCRAM, an emergency shutdown, sometimes going to elaborate lengths to set the SCRAM up or even having to manually insert the control rods into the reactor one at a time. This is as opposed to real life, where it's typically an automatic safety feature which engages if the reactor shifts outside a certain set of safe operating parameters and where a manual reactor SCRAM is as simple as turning a switch. A switch that usually exists in multiple redundant locations both near and far away from the reactor room, so that you can always reach at least one during an emergency. What's more, even the failsafe have "dead-man" failsafes. Usually, the SCRAM mechanism has to actively ''prevent'' the shutdown from happening -- for instance, by constantly pushing against a spring, or holding up control rods with an electromagnet. If the power to the safety systems is interrupted even for a moment, the mechanism stops resisting and the reactor shuts down. This is why most of Japan's nuclear reactors shut down safely during the 2011 earthquake, as the failsafes for their SCRAM systems kicked in (or were activated from the control room) at the appropriate time.
14** Similarly, fictional nuclear reactors will meltdown or go up in gigantic nuclear explosions at the slightest thing going wrong. A nuclear reactor simply cannot cause a full-scale nuclear explosion: fuel assemblies are arranged into long, thin columns separated by cladding; the large surface area causes a significant percentage of the available fission neutrons to dissipate into the moderator rather than causing further fission events, preventing a critical mass from forming. A core for a nuclear weapon needs a near-spherical shape for any kind of runaway chain reaction, and depending on size and material may also need a neutron reflector. Even in the extremely unrealistic scenario when nuclear fuel made of pure metallic weapons-grade uranium or plutonium (something that simply doesn't exist - see below) melts down and forms a perfect sphere of critical mass, it still needs one more condition to explode: for this mass to be squeezed into the critical radius, achieved in bombs only under tremendous pressure created by chemical explosives and in a very short (on the order of milliseconds) time window. Otherwise this sphere will simply heat up and boil.
15** As a matter of fact, most of the nuclear fuel in the world is NOT metallic. It is based on the metal oxides precisely to prevent it from easily melting or burning. And no matter how hard one tries, it is simply impossible to reach critical radius with oxides.
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17** Assuming that a reactor SCRAM / shutdown means the absolute end of a casualty. A reactor "shutdown" simply slows down fission events to a subcritical level; the radioactive decay of fission products inside the reactor still produces a significant amount of heat -- enough in the case of Three Mile Island (which was [=SCRAMmed=] very early in the timeline of the casualty) to damage the core and release radioactive material into the environment. The reactors in Fukushima were shut down upon the initial earthquake and still produced enough decay heat days later to cause full meltdown and hydrogen explosions. Even worse, at UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}}, the SCRAM signal aggravated the casualty (inside baseball: the control rod followers were made of neutron-transparent graphite, and replaced neutron-absorbing water in the control rod channels, causing a temporary spike in fission events before the even-more-neutron-absorbing boron control rod body was in place, driving the reactor over the edge into prompt criticality).
18** In fiction, a reactor melting down is always a Chernobyl-level catastrophe regardless of design. Most of the consequences of the Chernobyl meltdown were a direct result of the plant being built without a containment building, a structure that surrounds the reactor itself and is intended to reduce any consequences of a leakage or meltdown. In addition at Chernobyl, several safety systems were deliberately turned off for a scheduled experiment. These work rather well: in Three Mile Island, the containment building duly contained the steam and other bad effects of the meltdown. No pyrotechnics; in fact, the radiation released from Three Mile Island was less than the radiation coming from your computer monitor.
19*** Even in the SL-1 incident in 1961 (the only fatal reactor accident in the United States and another example of terrible control rod design), which lacked a designed containment building, the regular old building contained most of the radioactivity. Even with that, it proved that the core and water coolant vaporizing would prevent the core from melting down.
20*** Chernobyl's core of uranium fuel was surrounded by graphite, making the reactor a giant block of charcoal waiting to ignite into carbon-14 => radioactive [=CO2=] goodness. British nuclear power plants also use graphite as the moderator, except for Sizewell B, but they use carbon dioxide gas as coolant where Soviet reactors used water. It was the combination of graphite moderator and water coolant that made Chernobyl a death trap.
21*** In addition, the conditions for Chernobyl accident were caused by 'scientists' performing experiments during the night shift, when the inexperienced crew, only capable of following directions from a manual, were not aware of, or able to properly react to, the conditions before it was too late to save the reactor. What happened was the operators initiating the test ''after'' they screwed up and hastily corrected themselves. The screw-up was safe and unrelated to the experiment, and had they shut down the reactor normally as intended (and written in the manual) nothing would happen. They, however, pressed on (allegedly to have something to report as an achievement at the upcoming May Day celebration - and even then, it was after two of the more senior operators complained that it wasn't safe to proceed, though when they were threatened with losing their cushy jobs they knuckled under). Unfortunately, their previous actions has left the reactor in the unstable and unstudied state, and in the process of the test they removed ''the last'' control rods, causing the reactor to heat up. When it got WAY too hot, they tried to fix it by fully inserting all the control rods. The reactor promptly blew up, though it was not actually a nuclear blast, it just threw radioactive junk everywhere.
22** The Void Coefficient is probably deemed too scientific for the general public, so it's conveniently assumed that all reactors will suffer the same from thermal runaway. In real life, most reactors have a negative Void Coefficient, which means that they will reduce their thermal output when gas (steam) bubbles form in the coolant. In contrast, a positive Void Coefficient will increase heat output when gas bubbles form in the coolant. A well known reactor model with a dangerously high positive Void Coefficient is the Реактор Большой Мощности Канальный (High-Powered Channel-Type Reactor). Originally, this model's Void Coefficient was 4.7 beta, but it has been lowered to 0.7 beta after one of the reactors of this model gained negative publicity due to the Chernobyl accident.
23** Despite the common trope of villains (less commonly: the hero) stealing nuclear reactor fuel rods to build weapons out of, in real life, reactor fuel and weapons material are simply not interchangeable. Nuclear weapons require specific isotopes -- uranium-235 or plutonium-239 -- of very high purity (referred to as "weapons grade"), and reactor fuel doesn't even come close. A practical uranium design requires its uranium to be around 80% or more uranium-235, while the fuel in a civilian nuclear reactor consists of just '''3-5'''% uranium-235, and in a submarine reactor up to 20%.[[note]]As late as the late 1980s, there were at least a few research reactors still using small amounts of highly enriched uranium sandwiched as thin layers in aluminium plates instead of partially-enriched pellets. Separating U-235 from U-238 is difficult and relies on technologically advanced, incredibly expensive equipment like gas centrifuges; separating U-235 from aluminium just takes someone capable of performing relatively straightforward chemistry. Which is one of the reasons this design is no longer used. The amounts of fuel involved were just on the order of a few kilograms, though.[[/note]] And while you can relatively easily (assuming you have a fully equipped radiochemical plant) extract plutonium from spent fuel (and some fuels contain plutonium already mixed in), it will be a mixture of isotopes with only a small fraction being plutonium-239. '''Any''' significant admixture of other isotopes will make the plutonium useless or worse for weapons use, and isotope separation is a long, slow, infrastructure-dependent, and energy-intensive operation beyond the reach of most governments, never mind terrorist organisations. Conversely, fuel elements made of such highly-enriched isotopes simply react ''longer'' rather than more energetically. The average reactor eats about one rod a day; a theoretical reactor using weapons-grade fuel rods would eat one rod a month due to the removal of "nuclear poisons," which build up in "spent" fuel rods.
24# And on the subject of Criticality, any time some thing goes wrong in a nuclear facility, terrified screams of "It's GoingCritical" will fill the air, or the villain's plan will be to make the reactor go Critical. "Critical" means that the reaction is self sustaining and that the reaction is proceeding at a constant level -- in other words, a critical reactor is one that is operating at a steady constant power level. ''One more time, "Critical" reaction is the normal operating condition of a nuclear reactor.'' Super-Critical, while not used despite sounding definitely bad, simply means that the reaction is steadily gaining power, or simply, someone getting powered by the reactor turned on a light and so the reactor went temporarily super-critical to increase its energy output for the new drain. Finally, there ''IS'' a condition that would (almost) elicit the reactions of a Hollywood type critical reactor. It's called '''Prompt'''-Critical, and if a reactor has had this happen,[[note]]This is what destroyed the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 SL-1]] reactor in Idaho in 1961. The operators, whilst performing maintenance on the reactor, accidently removed the primary control rod entirely from the core. This immediately resulted in a major power output spike, which overheated the core to the point that steam pressure ejected the control rod and embedded it into the ceiling, [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice taking one of the operators with it]].[[/note]] there'd be no running around trying to prevent it or saying it happened; by the time any readings showed this happening, it would already be too late, and either the automatic safety systems would have kicked in and shut down the reactor, or the reactor pile would be an actual pile of slag. The pulse operation mode of [[http://www.ga.com/triga TRIGA]] research reactors is an intentional (and safe) invocation of this state.
25** Due to the abovementioned misconception of "critical mass", it's Hollywood-assumed that any minor wrong could send a nuclear reaction to prompt-critical. This is not practically the case, because, as we should more accurately speak of "critical density", most nuclear reactors are designed to stay below that at any time, including loss-of-coolant situations.
26*** Most commercial reactors are cooled and moderated by water; a loss of coolant would risk fuel melting, but the reactor would go subcritical from the loss of coolant. Even if they are moderated by graphite, like Chernobyl or Windscale reactors, the meltdown is the worst thing that ever can happen with them. The most of the damage in Chernobyl and Fukushima was from the destruction of the reactor ''buildings'', that lead to the spread of the "hot" junk around.
27** This comes from the Hollywood idea of reactors as bombs-in-waiting. When a nuclear bomb "goes critical", it's actually going Prompt-Critical which is why it explodes, thus when a reactor goes critical, [[MadeOfExplodium it becomes a bomb and explodes]].
28** There ''is'' such a thing as a ''criticality accident'', but this is something rather different. A criticality accident occurs when a critical mass of fissile material appears unintentionally. This doesn't happen in reactors; it happens in laboratories and fuel processing plants due to process accidents — and to the people who work in such settings, the possibility of a criticality accident is pretty much their [[NightmareFuel One True Nightmare]]. For more information, see [[http://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf this document.]]
29# Assuming the reactor core is inside the cooling tower. Because most people associate "nuclear power plants" with those giant hyperboloid structures as seen on ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', it's an easy mistake to assume that they ''are'' the plant and contain the reactor. In reality, the reactor is typically located in a separate block-shaped building (which ideally serves as a containment), and the towers are just the enormous radiators that contain and manage the cooling water. There are other types of power plants (such as coal plants) that have cooling towers which look just like the ones commonly associated with nuclear plants, whereas there are nuclear plants that don't ''have'' cooling towers. Notably, both the wrecked Chernobyl and Fukushima plants don't have them (Chernobyl has an unfinished cooling tower intended for unfinished additional reactors): Chernobyl used cooling ponds instead of towers, and given that Fukushima was situated right next to the Pacific Ocean, building cooling towers would be unnecessary as water could be piped straight in and pumped straight back out once it had been cooled down. Since the cooling towers are ''open'' on the top, placing the reactor inside would ''expose it to the open air'', which would obviously be a bad idea.
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32[[folder:Idea 2: Nuke-grenade! FIRE IN THE HOLE!]]
33# On the subject of critical mass, while both low-yield nukes and still-bulky "suitcase" nukes do exist in real life, critical mass means that there is an absolute lower limit on the size, weight, and yield of fission-based nuclear weapons. There are some exotic transuranic elements such as curium and californium with a much smaller mass, and in theory you could make an [[TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} atomic grenade]] out of them. In practice, they (and just about anything besides uranium and plutonium) would suffer from a whole rash of pre-ignition and stability issues, so you wouldn't be able to get them to explode outside of ludicrously rare lab conditions. (The reason that uranium and plutonium are useful in nuclear weapons is that they're not ''that'' radioactive. The plutonium isotope used in weapons has a half-life of 24,000 years; U-235 has a half-life of 700 ''million'' years. The ''really'' intense stuff is too unstable to actually build a weapon around.)
34** "Critical mass" is a highly misunderstood term. Whether a sample of fissile material will produce an uncontrolled chain reaction is dependent on (roughly) the ratio of mass to surface area. If the ratio is too low (too much surface area) neutrons escape without causing further fission. If it's above the critical ratio, then of the three neutrons produced by each fission, on average >1 will cause another fission (meaning that the rate of reactions will grow). The oft quoted "critical mass" is the critical mass where ''a sphere'' of the material at a given density will go critical on its own. Thus, you can have a solid subcritical chunk of a fissile material of a larger mass than that value, as long as it has a different geometry (e.g. shaped like a rod instead of a sphere).[[note]]This has been the cause of several accidents where workers have transferred material from one vessel to another of a different shape. An amount that's safe in one vessel might go critical in another. When this happens unintentionally it causes a "criticality accident", discussed in the previous section.[[/note]] It's also possible to detonate a bomb with less than the "critical mass" of material -- typically by the use of neutron reflectors. The United States tested nuclear weapons that used as little as 1 kg of plutonium, but only by surrounding it in many times that in neutron-reflecting tamper and chemical explosive.
35# Since All Nuclear Explosions Are [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons the Deadliest Mushroom]], a nuke will ''always'' make a mushroom cloud no matter how small it is, [[ExplosionsInSpace even in a vacuum]]. This is sometimes played for humor. Similarly, mushroom clouds are ''only'' created by nuclear weapons, rather than ''any'' [[EverythingMakesAMushroom sufficiently large explosion]].
36** Typically, the size and duration of the fireball and mushroom cloud will also have no real relation to how powerful the weapon is supposed to be.
37** Also, a nuclear explosion in a visual medium will often produce a series of vertical lines of smoke. These are copied from nuclear tests, but are not actually anything to do with the explosion; they're trails from rockets fired to give a visible indication of the shockwave.
38** Even in places with an atmosphere, the visual characteristics of the explosion are highly dependent on the local medium; thus, ones exploded underwater, underground, on the surface, in an airburst relatively near the ground, or in the high atmosphere all have ''very'' distinctly different appearances.
39# In a variant of SpaceIsNoisy, in a manner also frequently applied to lightning and conventional explosions, even when a nuclear explosion is accurately depicted visually (dazzling flash of light, followed by a rising mushroom cloud and shock waves racing outwards across the ground destroying everything that is not already on fire), frequently it will be heard to produce a deafening roar from the outset, long before the shock wave reaches the camera. Since the shock wave travels somewhat faster than the speed of ordinary sound, the initial flash and subsequent fiery visuals should actually be silent until the wavefront hits, save for the damage caused by the blast's radiation. For any observer sitting far enough away from the explosion to stand a chance of surviving it, this delay should be quite noticeable. Even documentaries have been known to get this wrong (e.g. UsefulNotes/TheSpaceRace).
40** An interesting phenomenon is that a fair number of close-to-Ground-Zero survivors of the Hiroshima bombing reported that they ''did not hear the explosion at all''. There is a welter of plausible explanations for this freakish occurrence (being in underground bank vaults, psychological effects, memory tricks), but no real evidence. Here's to hoping that we can keep that [[ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow a mystery unanswered by replicated experiments]].
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43[[folder:Idea 3: Fission = Fusion]]
44# Fission is breaking up a heavy nucleus (usually uranium or plutonium) into two lighter nuclei, plus a few loose neutrons.[[note]]Which are critically (hee hee) important.[[/note]] Fusion is pretty much the opposite: joining light nuclei (usually hydrogen isotopes) into a heavier one (usually helium). Since fusion and fission-based technology are both atomic, nuclear fusion is depicted as the same as but more than nuclear fission. Plutonium is usually similarly depicted in relation to uranium.
45** The existence of fusion-assisted nuclear weaponry is simply not acknowledged. All nuclear weapons, even those in the multimegaton range, run entirely off of fission. Typically, if a "fusion bomb" is talked about, it will imply that the device is extremely futuristic.
46*** The hydrogen bomb or "H-Bomb" is a fission-ignited fusion reaction, or a "fission-fusion" bomb. Due to the high initiation temperature required for the fusion reaction to take place, this is known as a "thermo-nuclear" rather than a nuclear device. The term thermonuclear, while often applied to all fission weapons, correctly refers only to the fission-fusion or h-bomb type weapon.
47*** The difference between a fission weapon and a fission-fusion weapon is academic at best; immediately after WWII, most new A-bombs were made using "boosted fission" (in which a small fusion reaction is initiated in order to provide more neutrons and more efficient fission), and a "fission-fusion" weapon still derives most of its energy from fission.
48*** Most fission-fusion weapons use a cladding of uranium-238, which will absorb most of the massive number of 'unused' fusion neutrons and then fission; the bomb is now a 'fission-fusion-fission' bomb. Without that U-238 cladding, the neutrons spray out at high speed, irradiating the near area, and you have what the US called an 'Enhanced Radiation Reduced Blast' weapon -- also known as the "Neutron Bomb".
49*** There are two main types of fusion bombs: the American Teller-Ulam type (also known as "Sakharov's Third Idea"), and the Soviet Sakharov type, also called "the layer cake". The Teller-Ulam bomb consists of a fission starter charge (often called the primary), a lithium deuteride fusion fuel block (often with the additional neutron source) next to it, clad by the U-238 "pusher" or "tamper" (the whole assembly usually dubbed the secondary), and the shaped heavy metal case. When activated, the primary emits a lot of hard X-rays that are reflected from the case to the secondary, ablating the tamper's exterior and causing it to compress, which in turn starts the fusion. Sakharov-type bomb has the starter completely surrounded by the fuel and the U-238 case, and the starter is optimized to emit mostly neutrons. When activated the neutrons are absorbed by the case, which then starts to fission, and the heat and radiation from the exploding case compresses and activates the fuel. It is called "layer cake" because layers of lithium and uranium could be repeated, increasing the device's output.
50*** All modern warheads use the Teller-Ulam system, as the "Layer cake" design was rather inefficient, but it let the Soviet scientists to create an upgrade of the American design, where the additional fission-fusion stages are added to the device, thus making it of theoretically unlimited power. The most powerful thermonuclear device ever detonated, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba the "Tsar Bomba,"]] was reportedly a three-stage device employed in a two-an-a-half staged configuration, with the tamper of the tertiary made of lead and not the U-238 to reduce the fallout. With the uranium tamper the bomb's projected output was 101.5 megatons, lead tamper reduced it to just ~50 Mt.
51*** To clarify: The "layer cake" design was abandoned as soon as the Teller-Ulam design had been arrived at (the US, the UK and the USSR all got it at roughly the same time, with a certain amount of help from espionage). Multi-stage devices are made of a cascade of Teller-Ulam stages, one Teller-Ulam stage acting as the primary of a larger Teller-Ulam stage. The cascade can be continued more or less indefinitely, but no more than three stages are required for any militarily useful yield. The Tsar Bomba - which was purely for show, and militarily useless - was a Teller-Ulam cascade.
52*** It is theoretically possible to build a fusion bomb without a fission primary, what would be referred to as a pure-fusion weapon. Proposed "alternate primaries" include exotic nuclear isomers, sufficiently powerful lasers or flux compression generators, or even minute quantities of anti-matter. Such weapons would theoretically have the advantage over Teller-Ulam devices in yield control and produce nearly no fallout. However current technological limitations mean none of these methods are currently within reach as even an experimental device, much less a practical weapon, leaving them in the realm of science fiction for now.
53** Fusion power tends to be depicted as operating in exactly the same way as nuclear power; while the reactor set / prop might look futuristic, expect talk of chain reactions and meltdowns in relation to a fusion plant, even though neither term could possibly be applied to any practical nuclear fusion plant. Fusion reactions are not self-sustaining unless they happen inside a star; in fact, the ongoing problem preventing us from achieving a fusion-powered grid is that it currently takes a lot more constant energy influx to cause the reaction to happen than can be gathered by it. Additionally, the fusion reaction itself requires exceedingly delicate conditions, carefully maintained by massive electromagnets and vacuum pumps. As a result, instabilities, fluctuations or otherwise serious problems in a fusion reactor will merely cause the reactor to instantly and mostly harmlessly shut itself down.
54*** Still, while being much more safe than fission reactors, fusion ones are not entirely harmless. Most proposed fusion reactions generate lots of neutrons, which transmute anything they come across into a soup of radioactive isotopes. Some possible fusion reactions are aneutronic, mostly or entirely avoiding this problem, but those produce less energy and are technically more challenging to achieve, as if making a viable fusion power plant of any kind weren't hard enough.
55*** It would actually be about the same at the plant itself. The main source of radiation exposure for personnel operating a nuclear reactor is nitrogen-16, which is created when oxygen in water (you still have to cool the thing, and transport energy to your steam turbines somehow) is exposed to neutron flux. Neutrons will also irradiate iron and cobalt atoms in the primary coolant piping, providing the majority of radiation exposure in a shutdown, contaminating the coolant (thus requiring the same control methods needed as in a fission plant), and ensuring that all maintenance tooling and cleaning supplies are low-level nuclear waste (again, same control methods). However, the big difference between fission and fusion in terms of waste is the spent nuclear fuel; the nuclides created by the fusion reaction itself would be short-lived and tame compared to fission products.
56*** Magnetic confined helium-3 fusion could be cleaner, as the byproduct of fusing helium-3 is protons. This has two advantages: 1. A proton flux won't make the walls radioactive because it will be contained by the magnetic field. 2. Since protons are charged, a high energy proton flux IS an electric current, so it can generate electricity directly by induction, rather than requiring a steam plant. However; side-reactions in the fusing plasma can still generate a significant number of free neutrons, particularly for helium-3 reacted with deuterium rather than with itself. The resulting radiation hazards depend on the details of the assumed reactor design.
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59[[folder:Idea 4: Atomic battery: an unlimited energy source in your pocket]]
60# It may come as a surprise to many, but nuclear reactors do not actually produce electricity. They just produce heat, nothing else (well, nothing useful that is). To convert heat to electricity you need a power plant, usually a steam turbine since the reactor needs water to cool anyway. The reactor and the power plant are always located adjacent to one another, and that's why they are regarded together as "an atomic power plant", but it still doesn't change the fact that the reactor is basically just a boiler. So it doesn't really matter how small, clean or reliable can we make the reactors in the future, they will never turn into magical unlimited batteries. There ARE actual atomic batteries, called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator RTG.]] The atomic fuel inside them is also used just as a heater, but they also include some thermoelectric generators to convert heat to electricity. The conversion efficiency is ''very'' low, around single per cents, and the battery cannot "switch off", it will produce heat whether you're currently use it to power something or not. This, together with the prohibitively high prices of such batteries, leave not many fields of use for them. Mostly, they are used for unmanned space probes. The power requirements for them are usually low, and the excessive heat is actually a bonus, since you need to heat the electronics in space anyway. But even if we make such batteries cheap, even if we shield them completely from the radiation, even if somehow ensure its safety, [=RTGs=] will never become a "consumer battery". First, as was said, because of the heat. To produce 100W of electric power it'll have to dissipate ~2kW of thermal energy. That's a small oven worth of heat, while 100W will be barely enough to power a laptop, never mind a car or a [[ComicBook/IronMan powered armor]]. Second problem is the atomic fuel itself. The specific power of the fuel is inversely proportional to its half-life, which means if we want a small and powerful battery, we'll have to deal with reduced lifetime. Polonium, for example, produces 140W/g of heat, but has a half-life of 4 months, which means that just after 4 month its output power will be cut in half. And remember, you can't switch it off, which means the 4 months will start the day it was made, not the day you pick it up in store. By the time you buy it it'll probably be already at 80% or less, and by the time you actually need it it'll be long dead.
61** Extremely small plutonium batteries were used in a series of pacemakers in the early 1970s. More recent designs use lithium-ion batteries that are smaller still and do not require shielding.
62** Betavoltaic batteries use nuclear isotopes that release electrons as they decay, producing current directly. They have higher efficiency than thermal generators, but they are extremely expensive for anything more than trace amounts of power - a betavoltaic battery containing a gram of tritium and producing less than 1 watt costs tens of thousands of dollars.
63# Sometimes authors go even further, and invent a rechargeable atomic batteries. Basically, just a normal battery, only better, because [[InSpace ATOMIC]]! Just because two things deal with electricity doesn't mean they are in any way related. You can't "recharge" decaying atoms, not with electricity, not with anything. The only way the heavy elements can appear in our universe, is during the collapse of dying stars. The same way you can't split back the atoms synthesized during the atomic fusion. This is a one-way process, and nothing in the universe can reverse it.
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66[[folder:Idea 5: I Can Touch Radiation!]]
67# All [[PowerGlows nuclear technology and material glows]]. Most often a SicklyGreenGlow. It's usually fatal or at least extremely dangerous just to be in the same room as it, regardless of whether it actually would be or not.
68** Most radioactive materials don't glow at all.[[note]]Not in visible light.[[/note]] Swimming pool reactors have a characteristic blue glow that's actually [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation Cherenkov radiation]] -- pretty, but not caused by the radioactivity itself. Some intensely radioactive substances like actinium, cesium-137, and pure radium metal itself (in large enough quantities), actually do glow [[note]]technically, self-fluoresce [[/note]] by their own radioactivity and are generally not healthy to be in the same room with. However, even those are faint enough that you can only see the glow in the dark.
69*** Sufficiently hot masses of critical material, such as the fuel pellets for radioisotope thermal generators, do glow, but not out of radiation - merely out of heat. Also, your average picture of a glowing fuel-pellet typically cheats - most such pictures are taken after covering the pellet with a thermal insulator, concentrating its heat enough for the express purpose of making it glow and taking a pretty picture. You'd only be able to see the glow with an infrared-sensitive imager otherwise.
70** Most radioactive elements are greyish, not green or blue. The most common (non-metallic) color of nuclear material would be from one of the first steps in uranium refinement; yellowcake.
71** The "sickly green glow" idea probably came from the greenish color of the old glow-in-the-dark radium dial wristwatches. Even in this case, though, it isn't the radium that's glowing. The hands and face are painted with a mixture of radium and zinc sulfide; the latter phosphoresces when struck by the high-energy charged particles emitted as the former undergoes radioactive decay.
72** Another source of this idea is probably the "uranium glass", a colored glass very popular in the early 20th century. Its actual color and transparency varies from straw to grass-green, and from slightly dusty to completely opaque, but it invariably glows a solid yellow-green under the UV light.[[note]]The uranium glass simply changes the invisible short-wavelength UV light into visible light with a longer wavelength. So do other substances, like some washing powers (to make white clothes look whiter under sunlight).[[/note]]
73# Any amount of radiation renders an area a physically unapproachable deathtrap for thousands of years. Radiation in videogames might approach lava in terms of lethality (well, [[ConvectionShmonvection assuming that we're talking about real-world lava rather than video-game lava]]), or even be used as an ersatz InsurmountableWaistHeightFence to define the edge of a stage.
74** Anything this insanely radioactive would be decaying so rapidly it wouldn't actually be the same isotope for more than a few minutes. That's what radioactivity ''means''.
75** It's perfectly possible to walk around in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone without dropping dead in seconds or growing a third arm. In the entire 30-kilometer Zone dangerous radiation is limited to two "hot spots" with a total area of 2000 square meters, and 'dangerous' means 'a picnic in this place might result in some radiation poisoning'. The Zone's become an accidental nature reserve. Not everything is roses, of course: the soil closest to the plant contains high levels of uranium (a heavy metal), and the food chain is still full of easily absorbed caesium-137 and strontium-90 (with a half-life of roughly 30 years, which means that even today about half of it remains after the disaster). So while they're mostly free from human interference, animals in the area have reduced lifespans and a high rate of birth defects.
76** People live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, despite the best efforts of a pair of horribly primitive and inefficient strategic nuclear weapons, and towns near Fukushima (which, despite its seriousness, doesn't hold a candle to Chernobyl in terms of the amount of radiation released) are being cleaned up and reopened on a yearly basis. Weapons that would have left a much larger and more concentrated amount of radioactive fallout than more efficient weapons. This is helped by a benefit of an air burst - if the fireball doesn't touch the surface, fallout is extremely small. If it does touch the surface, though, it's irradiating and vaporizing tons of dirt/water which then go up in smoke... and later come down. [[ParanoiaFuel Somewhere]].
77# Walking hand in hand with ArtisticLicenseBiology, instant, horrible, in-generation [[NuclearMutant mutations caused by exposure to radiation]]. Living organisms simply do not work that way. For starters, where radiation is supposed to "alter" (e.g. damage) DNA/RNA, it would have to introduce the same very specific change in billions, per body cell count, of ''random'' events hitting that DNA. Then, as a functioning body actually has far more regulating systems active, it should somehow alter all of them ''in precisely the same manner'', so we do not get an old, boring RealLife set of radiation symptoms like body systems fighting in an attempt to fix each other. And not the least, the amount of radiation doing all that should somehow fail at destroying/damaging every other body chemical but DNA (rendering the whole organism inoperable) or simply frying the subject in the process.
78[[/folder]]
79
80See also ANuclearError (for policy-related gaffes involving atomic weapons), and UsefulNotes/{{Energy}} (for a fundamental explanation on how energy, of which nuclear power is a manifestation, works). This trope is frequently invoked by writers for the sake of artistic license. A good portion of these have fallen victim to TheCoconutEffect.
81----
82!!Examples
83
84[[foldercontrol]]
85
86[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
87* The ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' franchise has been using nukes since its beginning, so this trope has been played with a number of times:
88** Amazingly enough, ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' {{averted|Trope}} this: a nuke is launched in one episode, and is then sliced apart by the eponymous Gundam's beam saber. Slicing the nuke ''does not'' cause it to explode, but fall to pieces harmlessly, though he does have to cut it a certain way to avoid detonation.
89** Sadly, later series are more inaccurate. ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam0083StardustMemory'' prominently featured a nuclear weapon as a central part of the plot... which did not behave much like an actual nuke would, with the biggest mistake being the GP-02 Physalis Gundam's atomic bazooka firing some sort of energy beam rather than a projectile. It has been suggested that the bazooka is actually a [[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#Nukes_In_Space~Nuclear_Shaped_Charges casaba howitzer]], a directed energy weapon that utilizes a nuclear-shaped charge to generate a high-energy gamma ray laser and is essentially a hypothetical real-life WaveMotionGun. However, they still fail in that in order to make a casaba howitzer that small without blowing up the GP-02 in the process, it would have to be made of a material much, ''much'' stronger than anything currently known to man, and since mobile suits of all makes and models are getting torn apart by simple energy and kinetic weapons, this probably isn't the case.
90*** Or it could be that the "energy beam" is just an animation gimmick to make it easier to see, like how rail guns shoot "yellow beams" or the "Cannons" on the guncannon and guntank shoot glowing bolts of energy.
91** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' has ZAFT remove nukes from the equation of war with the N-Jammer, a device that completely cancels nuclear fission reactions in its radius... [[AppliedPhlebotinum somehow]]. Then N-Jammer Canceller technology is discovered and they go back to launching nukes (as well as using nuclear power as an energy source). ZAFT's [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeedDestiny next countermeasure]] is the Neutron Stampeder, which somehow prematurely detonates the warheads before they're launched.
92** ''Anime/TurnAGundam'' also features nuclear warheads of the grenade-like variety, but this is justifiable for a few reasons. One, they're at least 2,000 years old, so even if they weren't designed to be triggered by impact, the control mechanisms simply aren't going to be reliable anymore. Two, everyone treats them like grenades because they have no idea what a nuke actually is or how it works; nukes are a weapon out of very bad ancient history, so it's natural to be terrified of them even before [[spoiler:five of them blow up Gavane Gooney]].
93** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamThe08thMSTeam'' {{avert|edTrope}}s this interestingly. Nuclear weapons are banned by a treaty, however all mobile suits have nuclear reactors. A General in the Federation [[WeHaveReserves keeps sending in mobile suits]] to a mountain stronghold in the hope that it will get damaged just right to trigger a meltdown and take out the base. The mobile suits in question use Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactors, which should not be melting down but if hit with a beam weapon can explode with great force. The Federation General in question apparently overlooked the relative rarity of beam weapons on Zeon mobile suits.
94** ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'' is guilty of Idea 1. Defunct nuclear reactors are valuable but highly dangerous targets for scavengers... because apparently some idiot(s) left them all running, and if you pull out too many components(or simply damage the cooling tower bad enough) they will explode like bombs. A fight between mobile suits during a raid results in a second sunrise.
95* In the ''Anime/BubblegumCrisis'', the final episode has a runaway robotic tunnel digging machine, uh, digging a tunnel though an active fusion reactor. The secondary police characters were alternating between ranting against and calmly accepting the imminent vaporizing of Mega-Tokyo. To be fair, it was digging very fast, almost a foot per minute.
96* An example involving [=HEMPs=] happens in ''Manga/HighschoolOfTheDead''. A noticeable example of that in play: as cell phones are smaller, they should not be able to blow up as easily as the cell phones involved in a phone conversation between Shizuka and Rika did.
97[[/folder]]
98
99[[folder:Comic Books]]
100* ''ComicBook/{{Justice League|OfAmerica}}'' #3 (1987) features the "cooling tower = reactor building" misconception.
101* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'':
102** Another "cooling tower = reactor building" misconception occurs in ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' #329: Spider-Man (who has the powers of [[Characters/MarvelComicsCaptainUniverse Captain Universe]] at this point) fights the Tri-Sentinel, who attacks a nuclear power plant. During their fight, the Tri-Sentinel smacks the cooling tower, to which Spidey comments: "Oh, no! He's cracked a ''containment tower''!"
103** The "Aunt May almost marries Doctor Octopus" story climaxes with Hammerhead confronting Doctor Octopus in front of a breeder reactor. "The slightest vibration could set off a chain reaction!", Octopus exclaims. Hammerhead doesn't listen, and charges at Ock headfirst -- the next page depicts a mushroom cloud, of course. A later issue (which reveals that both villains had survived this) shows that the "chain reaction" was caused by Hammerhead getting his cranium stuck in a control panel. Never mind that the biggest danger with a breeder reactor is fire, not everything going kaboom.
104* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' storyline "ComicBook/BrainiacRebirth": Brainiac's body is disintegrated into molecules, which look like a stream of multicolored marbles and are visible to the human eye.
105* In ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis2004'', ComicBook/{{Firestorm|DCComics}} the Nuclear Man, mortally wounded after being impaled through the chest with the Shining Knight's magical sword by the Shadow Thief, detonates like an atomic bomb a short while later. The omniscient narrator, ComicBook/GreenArrow, comments:
106-->''"No one there is a physicist. But they still know what happens when you puncture a nuclear reactor."''
107** To which reviewer Greg Morrow of the comic book blog "Howling Curmudgeons" [[http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons/archives/006974.html had this to say]]:
108--->''"Well, I ''am'' a physicist, and the answer to what happens when you puncture a nuclear reactor is: Pretty much nothing. ''[...]'' In no case would you get, as ''Identity Crisis'''s narrator seems to think is self-evident, a nuclear explosion. Worst case, you get an explosion of radioactive material (not unlike a 'dirty bomb'), but you're not going to get a Fat Man-type explosion."''
109* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'': Gamma rays and gamma radiation are depicted as visible green energy, when visible green light is at a lower frequency than gamma rays, and gamma rays are at a higher frequency than visible light, ultraviolet, and X-rays. [[spoiler:Of course, the form of gamma radiation that created the Hulk is [[ComicBook/ImmortalHulk later revealed]] to be part of an EldritchAbomination [[DoingInTheScientist that doesn't follow scientific laws]].]]
110* In Creator/BrianKVaughan's ''[[ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} Logan]]'', during World War II, Logan happens to be hanging out in Hiroshima at the exact same time the atomic bomb detonates. Standing within the bomb's blast radius, within view of the Genbaku Dome, the only structure left standing after the blast, now the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial Hiroshima Peace Memorial,]] Logan survives, because his {{healing factor}} means he's really tough. He shows injuries that look like severe radiation burns, but these are temporary because he has a healing factor. He doesn't show signs of radiation poisoning staying in his body well into modern day, probably because of his healing factor. And he is not disintegrated by "a force equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT" because... healing factor?
111* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}''. The BigBad uses this trope to convince an ignorant public that Dr. Manhattan is a walking radioactive cancer-machine.
112* In ''[[Creator/DrSeuss The Butter Battle Book]]'', the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo appears to be the size of a thimble, yet has enough destructive potential to send the Yooks racing for the fallout shelters.
113* The death of Locke in the ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'' story "Mobius: 25 Years Later". Let's see, why is Locke dying? Because he contracted cancer. How did he contract cancer? Because of a lifetime of absorbing Master Emerald radiation interacting badly with his altered DNA. Why is his DNA altered, ''he experimented on himself to give his then-unborn son Chaos-fueled superpowers.'' See the problem? The same genes that end up killing him through enhanced radiation sickness are now in Knuckles. Oh, and just to add further insult to this, ''Locke gave Knuckles' egg a big ol' dose of Master Emerald radiation soon after it was laid''. How Knuckles didn't hatch into a stillborn tumor baby, while his dad ended up dying from cancer, despite having the same combination of altered genes and radiation, is anyone's guess.
114* ''ComicBook/MetalMen'' commits a similar mistake to that described for ''Series/TheGreenHornet'', below. Magnus's bomb group is about to let go and obliterate his evil robot twin, but when he sees the Metal Man "Plutonium", he orders them to hold fire for fear of setting it off. The evil Magnus knows this and says so to Platinum seconds before the real Magnus perceives the situation. Of course, in this case, it might ''not'' be an error because Plutonium was a sentient creature which could choose its moment to explode.
115* A minor one: in Marvel Comics' ''ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet'', [[Characters/MarvelComicsThanos Thanos]] at one point mentions having a "thermal nuclear device," rather than a ''thermo''-nuclear device.
116* ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'': The villain Radioactive Man frequently uses his powers with no indication that he or his surroundings will become contaminated with radiation, or that the heroes, villains, or any bystanders will receive radiation poisoning from his presence or the use of his powers. But we do know his radiation can deflect Thor's hammer being thrown towards him.
117* ''Tales of Suspense'' #49: At a nuclear bomb test at Stark's nuclear weapons plant, "A highly-refined nuclear explosion takes place, dangerously close to ComicBook/IronMan and [[ComicBook/XMen the Angel]]!!" Luckily, Iron Man is protected by his "heavily-insulated flexible metal costume", which allows him to "withstand the tremendous shock of the explosion without suffering any lasting ill effects." But Angel, "wearing no such protective clothing, receives the brunt of the radioactivity"; suddenly, the radiation turns the Angel's personality to evil!
118* The third, fusion-powered version of ComicBook/{{Starman}} for Creator/DCComics fought a phasing opponent who used a Cadmium dagger (cadmium being used to dampen nuclear reactions in fission reactors sometimes) in an attempt to neutralize Starman's powers because 'well you're powered by nuclear energy!'. Which got him a 'you're an idiot!' moment from Starman as he rightly points out that his being transformed into a solar-powered being like the sun meant he ran on fusion and not fission reactions.
119* Dan Jurgen's ''[[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]]'' #51 has Thor magically contain the explosive blast from a nuclear missile strike, with no hint of any radiation escaping into the atmosphere. In Asgard, a nuclear bomb detonates in ''Thor'' #66-67: Thor survives without carrying around radiation, and Asgard does not stay a nuclear wasteland.
120* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: Atomia's introduction has a few examples, for instance Diana wearing a containment suit to gather Atomia's shrunk down highly radioactive lab but then she takes it off and she and the Holldiay Girls interact with it and are even imprisoned in it without any ill effects.
121[[/folder]]
122
123[[folder:Fan Works]]
124* ''Fanfic/QuarterLifeHalfwayToDestruction'', being a TrollFic, does not have the usual errors but instead makes up new ones. Examples:
125** An isotope being so "vollatile" [sic] that it doesn't have a half-life, but a "quarter-life". The "quarter-life" of a radioactive material would be the time taken for the radioactivity of a material to drop to a quarter of its original value; this would be precisely twice the half-life of a material. Furthermore, volatility has nothing to do with radioactivity.
126** Said isotope "hit[ting] quarter-life" causing a meltdown, which makes the room "slowly become vaporize," causing a scientist to be "blowed to smitheroons."
127** And finally, the isotope "goes off harmless" when plunged into the ocean.
128* ''Fanfic/LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami'' keeps returning to this one. A nuclear bomb is no more powerful than a small pipe bomb ("the nuclear bom went off like a bom") -- the worst of the damage is a scratch in Light's dad's car -- but covers the area in "radiactiv" (which fatally irradiates "[[IAmNotShazam Yotsuba]]" but leaves everyone else unharmed). Later, nuclear missiles are used as pens, and later than that, putting "nuclears" in a normal explosion makes it magic, [[OutrunTheFireball letting it chase our 'hero']].
129* ''Fanfic/LifeAfterDeathTrilogy'' deals with two examples of nuclear physics. First is Dr. Octavius's infamous experimental fusion reactor, and more in line with this trope are the four plutonium batteries he uses to power the tentacles. At one point Octavius mentions that he's rigged a failsafe in them that will deliberately overload the batteries in the event of his death as a way to keep the tentacles from falling into anyone else's hands, essentially making a quartet of small nuclear bombs. Vindictive as he might be, this trope does get averted in that Octavius knows full well that nuclear reactor =/= nuclear bomb and the damage his little batteries would inflict is nowhere near the annihilation of half of Washington DC he threatens.
130* ''Fanfic/TheLegendOfTotalDramaIsland'' uses a bit of artistic license to provide a plausible(ish) explanation for the detonation of Izzy's firestarter.[[note]]The canon counterpart of this scene was merely a sight gag that viewers [[RuleOfFunny weren't expected to dwell on]], but the fanfic author is fond of [[ShownTheirWork explaining things]].[[/note]] According to [[AllThereInTheManual the story's notes]], the story accepts as true the exaggerated claim, from a 1961 ''Popular Science'' article, that a californium bomb with a 10-ton yield could be the size of a pistol bullet.
131* Creator/HansVonHozel: "Suddenly, his potion solution constructed nuclear in its half life and opened up a black wormholee!!!!!!"
132[[/folder]]
133
134[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
135* In ''Anime/TheAnimatrix'', the scenes that explain how the machine city went to war with humanity has a part that involves humans nuking the shit out of their city. And the narrator says that it doesn't work because the machines "aren't affected by radiation." Ouch. Apparently, nukes in TheFuture have no blast-wave, and robots of TheFuture are immune to heat and the {{EMP}} that comes from a nuclear blast. Considering that they use EMP as their main weapon against the machines in the movies, it makes even less sense.
136** '...the machines had little to fear of the bombs' radiation and heat.' The former statement is problematic, the later is very much true. Most of a A-bomb's destruction comes from heat and machines are darned better at surviving that then mere flesh. The radiation? Not really an issue, as thanks to the square law of dissipation it'd only matter if you're close enough to be killed by the blast-wave. "Fun fact": armored fighting vehicles still proved surprisingly resilient against both heat and the blast-wave, hence why research focused on increasing the emitted radiation, resulting in the Neutron Bombs.
137** Although the statement about the machines' resilience against heat is generally true, the writers of ''Animatrix'' seem to have no idea ''how much'' heat does nuclear weaponry actually produce. The temperature near the center of their explosion reaches levels that you can normally meet on stars. To give a small example of their capabilities -- during "Trinity" nuclear test, the bomb (with yield equal to "only" 22 kilotons of TNT) was placed on top of a 30-metre tower made of steel, in the middle of a desert. The result? Steel tower ''vaporized'' -- literally ''nothing'' left of it -- and sand in about 300 metre radius around the explosion melted and ''boiled'', later congealing into a glassy residue named "trinitite". Now, imagine an entire barrage of a-bombs with many times greater yield than that (nuclear weaponry currently in possession of countries armed with them are much, much more powerful than those built in final days of World War Two) dropped at any city. While the idea of a machine city surviving a single nuclear bomb is plausible, the idea of it tanking a ''carpet bombing'' of such warheads (which is what happened to Zero-One) and coming out without a scratch is downright ludicrous.
138* The Martian nuclear reactors in ''Pinocchio in Outer Space''. They go supercritical and explode like an atom bomb (complete with mushroom cloud) because of ''sand'' blowing into their underground complex.
139* ''WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant'': "My Nuke Is Going Critical" version. When the nuclear missile fired by the Nautilus hits the Giant in space, it detonates. This is unlikely: nuclear weapons are specifically designed to only detonate under specific conditions, such as reaching ground level where the Giant originally was. The missile should have just been destroyed.
140* ''WesternAnimation/MrIncredibleAndPals'' uses this for StylisticSuck, with Lady Lightbug marking objects with "blue radioactivity" and firing strings of "radioactive silk" in combat, both of which visibly glow. None of the characters mind being in direct contact with it.
141[[/folder]]
142
143[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
144* In ''Film/{{Aliens}}'', the colony's nuclear fusion reactor has been damaged. This means that it's going to go off like Tsar Bomba in a matter of hours.
145** However, it's mostly {{averted|Trope}} in [[Film/{{Alien}} the first movie]] -- when the ''Nostromo''[='=]s engines overload, the blast appears as a large circle of light in space. Of course it’s then immediately playing another trope straight by having a shockwave hit the shuttle. A shockwave. In a vacuum. Complete with sound.
146* In ''Film/BabylonAD'', a radiation-shielded train passes over a bridge built across a [[FailsafeFailure massive crater blasted by a nuclear power plant]]. While a cool scene, apart from the "reactors blow up" fallacy, it also raises the question of the difficulties of building a bridge in such a highly-radioactive area (plus the expense of creating shielded trains) versus just building a detour.
147* ''Film/BackToTheFuture1'' features a minuscule plutonium powered fission reactor that barely alters the shape of the famous [=DeLorean=] time machine, has a 1.21 Gigawatt output (greater than many full-sized nuclear power stations), and expends a fuel rod in an instant. The epilogue and sequels show Doc retrofitted a futuristic appliance -- the "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" -- that looks like a coffee grinder and runs on household waste.
148* {{Averted|Trope}} and played straight in ''Film/BrokenArrow1996'':
149** Averted: After the crash of a Stealth bomber carrying nuclear missiles, it is correctly stated that the warheads cannot be detonated by burning jet fuel.
150** Averted: Chief Rhodes says that he is going to destroy one of the bombs by opening up the access panel and drop a couple of grenades in there. That is a prudent action since it is an intended safety philosophy that nuclear weapons will be rendered harmless if they are tampered with.
151** Averted: '''Broken Arrow''' is the correct United States military nuclear incident terminology for a nuclear weapon being lost in transit. Curiously, the actual incident is an '''EmptyQuiver''' -- that is to say, theft of nuclear weapons -- but the deception by the BigBad [[spoiler:Deakins]] makes it look like an accident. Or does it?! Because...
152** Played Straight: [[spoiler:Deakins]] has his henchmen act as if they are dying in agony from radiation from damaged weapons. But Plutonium is only mildly radioactive and cannot induce acute radiation sickness.
153** Played Straight: Even assuming Plutonium is highly radioactive, acute radiation sickness takes hours to set in. And when it does you first become nauseous, then you feel all right for several days, and then you die from organ failure. It is not this instant affair that the henchmen put on a big show of.
154** Played straight: And even assuming that acute radiation sickness is an instant killer, then the team -- specialized in the recovery of nuclear weapons -- would not have run in head first into a hot-spot without detection equipment and protective clothing. No-one would be fooled by the deception because such -- supposed -- behavior would be incompetence of the highest order.
155** Played Straight: [[spoiler:Hale]] says they are safe after nuclear explosion in the mine since it was underground. This is false since we see a big fireball that is chock-full of fresh fission by-products. Don't breathe this...
156** Played Straight: The underground nuclear explosion produces an electromagnetic pulse ({{EMP}}) that knocks out all electronics in the area and makes a helicopter crash. But underground nuclear explosions do not produce this effect. Only atmospheric explosions can cause [=EMPs=]. And for the truly spectacular [=EMPs=], those can only be caused by exo-atmospheric nuclear explosions. Finally: the helicopter is too old to be affected by malfunctioning electronics in that manner.
157** Averted: The villain tells his team not to shoot at the warheads. Even if he knows that they will not detonate from this, the admonition is warranted because if the weapons are damaged they will go from being valuable assets to useless junk.
158** Averted: [[spoiler:Hale]] says they will disable the weapons by entering the wrong access codes enough times into the PAL -- Permissive Action Links -- of the weapon. In real life this would work. But alas...
159** Played Straight: [[spoiler:Deakins]] has removed the access codes to the PAL, so that [[spoiler:Hale]] accidentally activates the weapon without any possibility to de-activate it. In real life these codes cannot be disabled, at least not by someone with [[spoiler:Deakins]]'s pay grade and especially not out in the wild.
160** Played Straight: The process of arming a nuclear weapon has several more steps than just authorizing yourself to the weapon. It is not the one-step affair we see in the film. This and the point above [[Film/DrStrangelove for reasons which at this moment must be all too obvious]].
161** And finally, averted, as the train carrying the nuke crashes [[spoiler:with the momentum of the crash [[RasputinianDeath launching the warhead straight into Deakins' chest, through a few walls, and right into an exploding helicopter]]]] without it detonating.
162* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''Film/ChairmanOfTheBoard''. A man paints himself with glow in the dark paint and says that he's glowing because of excessive radiation from Edison's invention. Edison points out that if the man was telling the truth about the radiation, he wouldn't be glowing; he'd be dead.
163* {{Averted|Trope}} '''and''' played straight in ''Film/TheChinaSyndrome''.
164** Averted in that the reactor incident shown toward the beginning of the film is a fairly realistic failure mode for a nuclear reactor from the period. (The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island a few days after the film's release was remarkably similar.)
165** Played straight in that the description of [[GoingCritical the possible effects of a reactor meltdown]] (including the TitleDrop) by a so-called expert is a [[AuthorFilibuster thinly veiled anti-nuclear screed]].
166* In ''Film/TheCore'', the good guys suddenly realize they need to up the yield of a nuke by 30% if they want to save the world. How do they accomplish this? By taking a plutonium bar from the CoolStarship's power generator and ''placing it right next to the bomb''. Stacking anything "nuclear" next to a bomb will not improve the bomb's yield.
167* In ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', the ChekhovsGun is the core of a fusion reactor designed to provide clean energy. It can be (and is) modified by a Russian scientist into a nuclear bomb with some work [[spoiler:and direct access to the blueprints, thanks to the fact that the woman who bankrolled and helped design the reactor was working with Bane]]. The reactor's core will also degrade over a period of time and eventually detonate, [[spoiler:which Bane has calculated to the second, again, thanks to the schematics he would have access to]]. While these are not possible with real-life nuclear reactors or theoretical cold fusion reactors, the reactor in the movie is all but outright stated to be a unique design created by Bruce Wayne and his scientists.
168* ''Film/Godzilla2014'':
169** The radiation detection capability of the MUTO is quite extraordinary, and radiation is not nutritive, except maybe to certain fungi... this is a ''Godzilla'' film, after all.
170** The MUTO creatures are drawn to nuclear weapons including ones on a submarine, but completely ignore the active nuclear reactors on the navy ships.
171* ''Film/HostileWaters'' (based on a real life incident involving the Soviet sub K-219) features a Soviet submarine which is leaking seawater into one of the missile tubes. The chief engineer informs the Captain that enough seawater mixed with the rocket fuel will cause an explosion and that the warheads will detonate. While an explosion (which did occur in real life) would be catastrophic, there is no chance that the warheads will go nuclear. In real life, the submarine was brought to a nuclear safe condition (as a result of the nuclear reactor not shutting down properly) at the cost of a sailor's life, but the explosion itself caused the submarine and its nuclear complement to sink to a depth of about 18,000 feet.
172* In the ''Film/JamesBond'' movies:
173** ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'': Renard gets hold of the plutonium sphere from a bomb, forms it into a rod, and tries to insert it into the reactor of a submarine and cause a meltdown. Bond and Renard handle the plutonium bar with their bare hands. A rod of Pu that size would weigh at least 50 pounds, which is big enough to be a critical mass. It would be exceptionally hot to the touch, and also would be emitting lots of neutron radiation. To be fair, Renard is both [[FeelNoPain immune to pain]] and suicidal, so the fact that the rods should be scalding hot and emitting lethal levels of radiation might actually be excusable in his case. Bond has no such excuse, though.
174*** The reactor of the movie's 1967-vintage nuclear sub had fuel assemblies (that plutonium rod) which could be manually inserted and removed. That's not how a Russian sub reactor is designed (though it is closer to certain heavy water power reactors.) To refuel the sub, they first need to shut down the reactor ''for 90 days'' so the fuel is not too hot from a radioactive and thermal standpoint. Then they cut open part of the sub's outside hull to remove the fuel assemblies. Big job, needed once every 5 to 10 years. The bullet stuck in the BigBad's brain would have killed him by then and the audience would be quite bored.
175** ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'' plays the trope straight at the beginning, when the top brass is talking about some Soviet nuclear torpedoes detonating or spreading plutonium from their missile strike. {{Averted|Trope}}, however, with regards to the climax’s missile launch, which is a non-nuclear cruise missile.
176* In ''Film/K19TheWidowmaker'', after the K-19's reactor suffer a coolant leak, the reactor officer, which just graduated from the academy, explains that the pressure will continue to build up until it reaches critical, at which point he explains he has no idea what's going to happen, but speculates that a nuclear explosion would happen with the melt down and "cook off" the nuclear warheads they're carrying.
177** Not only he ''should'' know what happens in this case, but he also should know that what's he describes is just plain impossible.
178* In ''Film/PacificRim'', the [[spoiler:Gipsy Danger]]'s nuclear reactor is repurposed as a nuclear bomb [[spoiler:to destroy the portal]], complete with huge explosion. Usually, that can't happen. It's all but stated, however, that the reactor was deliberately tuned to be used for a nuclear self-destruct, since setting it off can be done fairly easily from the cockpit.
179** The power source for a robot -- or HumongousMecha -- has absolutely no relationship to whether it's analog or digital. Raleigh connects the two for no reason.
180*** However, with the later model nuclear Jaegers, it's likely that the electronic systems would be hardened against radiation.
181** [[spoiler:Gipsy Danger]]'s "nuclear reactor" is not a nuclear reactor but something referred to as a "Nuclear Vortex Turbine" that has all the functionality of a fission rocket hooked up to a turbine and generator. [[spoiler:As we all know a rocket is just a slowed down and directed explosion, so it not to much of a stretch for it to be suddenly less controlled.]] This would also explain numerous other functions of the chest piece such as a [[spoiler:deceleration rocket]] or a [[spoiler:short range wave motion gun]].
182* In an {{aver|tedTrope}}sion of the trope, in ''Film/ThePeacemaker'', Nicole Kidman successfully stops an atomic explosion by distorting a piece of the explosive jacket surrounding the plutonium core, resulting in a small (if a bit dirty) conventional explosion because it wasn't shaped properly. This is exactly right.
183** At the beginning of the movie, a train carrying nuclear weapons explodes when it hits another train head on. The heroes point out that shouldn't happen, as modern warheads have numerous safeties. As one character puts it: "You can fire a pistol right at the warhead and it wouldn't go off." In fact, the bad guys rigged a nuke still on the train to blow.
184** The movie also correctly illustrates that most thermonuclear weapons consist of a primary fission charge and a secondary fusion fuel package. The BigBad removes the latter to make the weapon light enough to carry. (Though the elements are significantly larger and heavier in real life.)
185* ''Film/SpiderMan2'' features an ''extremely'' silly depiction of fusion power so that Doctor Octopus's tentacles can take control of his body (they're to manipulate the fusion at a safe distance). Highlights include Doc Ock saying there's only 25 pounds of tritium in the world, a deeply ridiculous open-sided reactor, and dropping an object established to be a miniature sun[[note]]it's clearly a sun as it has a photosphere with sunspots and the occasional flare[[/note]] into a river where it, um, goes out harmlessly. Because fusion plasma does that.
186** The typical fusion reactor has the plasma in a vacuum to prevent heat loss and to keep the assembly from being vaporized. Ock's design doesn't, which would have killed everybody in the room, even if it had been functioning perfectly. The tentacles would have been melted, if not vaporized, on contact with the plasma (Ock {{Hand Wave}}s this by mentioning that they're heatproof).
187** Prior to being quenched by the river, the miniature sun is shown acting as a tremendously powerful magnet, pulling in girders of the building it is contained in and instantly consuming them in its plasma. However, iron requires rather than produces energy by fusion. In contrast, water, being composed of light elements, is more likely to fuel a fusion process, and since it was solid as it entered the miniature sun, it would have cooled the system and reduced the fusion reaction rate. So something that would have instantly snuffed out the miniature sun is depicted as making it more powerful, while something that would have made it more powerful makes it fizzle.
188*** Quenching in the river is also ridiculous -- as anyone who has passed a nuclear cooling tower knows that quenching that kind of fire should have caused a tremendous amount of dangerously hot steam. The energy can't just "go away".
189** The amount of tritium claimed isn't too silly, although the number given is a little low. As of the late 1990s, the USA had only produced a total of 225 kg of tritium since its nuclear program began, and with a half-life of only 12 years, most of that no longer exists. In the cleanup following the Fukishima disaster, release of large amounts of tritium into the environment was a worry - the site was estimated to contain less than 2.5 ''grams'' in total, which was still considered a lot.
190* In ''Film/SupermanIVTheQuestForPeace'', Superman drops Nuclear Man into the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant... and he somehow ends up inside the reactor (which should be located in a different building), which somehow ends up destroying Nuclear Man.
191* In ''Film/TheSwarm1978'', a horde of killer bees gets into a nuclear power plant. This somehow causes the plant to [[GoingCritical go critical]] and go up in a gigantic explosion (within seconds!). ''Without'' killing the bees.
192* ''Film/TerrorFromTheYear5000'' has an archeologist use carbon-14 dating to determine that a ''metal'' statue came from the ''future''. And when he and another guy hold a Geiger counter over the statue, they are shocked to learn that it's incredibly radioactive. Seeing as carbon-14 is a ''radioactive isotope'', you'd think they would have noticed this earlier...
193** Also, you can't use C14 dating on non-organic substances (it sometimes works on pottery because straw was used to reinforce unfired pots). C14 is built up in living organisms, then decays after the organism dies, so assuming that the statue was organic, its age would be dated from its creation regardless of time travel. Uranium dating would have avoided all these problems.[[note]]Though the error bars on uranium dating are a lot bigger than ~3000 years, so a reasonable scientist would likely just conclude that a date in the future just meant the item was made "recently"... within the last couple of million years. This is not especially useful, unless they suspect it wasn't made by humans.[[/note]]
194** On top of all that, the film exaggerates the precision of carbon dating. In real life it doesn't produce ''a'' year but an approximation, normally worded as a year plus or minus some number.
195* Another surprising {{aver|tedTrope}}sion in the comedy/action flick ''Film/TrueLies'':
196** Marine Harriers attack a trio of nuke-carrying trucks. One of them asks for confirmation that the missiles won't set off the nukes, and Harry assures them that they won't. His expression to his partner after he says this, however, indicates he isn't as sure of this as he sounds. Since he is telling them to go ahead, he probably is aware that even if it ''is'' possible, it's extremely unlikely, and a chance well worth taking, weighed against the potential harm of the trucks getting away.
197** About a minute before the bomb detonates, law enforcement officers told people not to look in its direction, and the pilots of the Harriers landed their planes and shut down the engines, while Harry holds his hand over his eye so he could not see the blast in his peripheral vision.
198* Also surprisingly {{averted|Trope}} in ''Film/TheFateOfTheFurious'', which otherwise [[ArtisticLicensePhysics breaks every physics law in existence]]. [[spoiler:The submarine porting nuclear missiles doesn't explode in a nuclear blast when it's destroyed by heatseeker, and Tej even points out that the missiles aren't dangerous without being armed.]]
199* {{Discussed|Trope}} and {{averted|Trope}} in ''Film/UnderSiege'' when Steven Seagal's character is preparing to fire on the sub with the stolen warheads. Jordan Tate asks, "Won't the bombs detonate?"; he tells her: "It doesn't work that way; they will just sink".
200* ''Film/TheWolverine'': Yashida stares directly into the flash of an atomic bomb and suffers no ill-effects. He should have been burned severely or at the very least blinded on the spot, which would have made it a lot harder to run for the well. His survival of the following explosion and radiation is somewhat more plausible, due to distance and detonation factors (an air-burst detonation leaves relatively little fallout), but still rather unlikely given he waited until the blast had practically caught up to them. At the same time, his survival at all is not completely out of the bounds of credibility: There are confirmed survivors of the Hiroshima bombing who were within the main blast epicenter zone, one of whom was only 170 meters away from the detonation point at the time of the explosion (the man was, however, inside a reinforced basement).
201* {{Parodied|Trope}} in ''Film/YoungEinstein'', when Einstein attempts to add bubbles to beer by splitting the ''beer atom''... with a chisel. Eventually he [[GoneHorriblyRight succeeds]], and an exterior shot lets us watch his shack explode.
202** He goes on to ''top'' this by ''stopping a runaway nuclear reaction'' by ''hooking up an electric guitar to the reactor'' and playing it at insanely high decibels to bleed off the energy. "''IT'S ALL RIGHT, MARY! ... THEY'RE ONLY ELECTRONS!''"
203* Recycling clips of nuclear tests is common in BMovie[=s=], but this can result in StockFootageFailure as they typically include vertical smoke lines from rockets deployed during tests to measure the path of the shock front, even when the weapon is supposed to be a battlefield deployment.
204* ''Film/{{Testament}}'' features a "harmless flash." If you are close enough to see the flash in such a way, you're likely being burned up in it. Nuclear flashes are ''not'' just harmless pretty or scary light -- they are intense heat. That said, the scarier thing about ''Testament'' is the implication that it ''wasn't'' close at all (e.g. no damage, no immediate fires)... and still was that bright.
205* In ''Film/GIJoeRetaliation'', all the nukes in the world are fired but are all aborted (exploded) short of their intended targets -- ignoring the fact that they just essentially detonated thousands of {{dirty bomb}}s in the upper atmosphere all over the earth. All of that undetonated fissile material (it ''doesn't'' get destroyed or become un-radioactive in a non-nuclear explosion) will be spread out and drift down to earth, polluting the planet.
206** Then again, this is part of [[spoiler:Cobra's evil plan]], so it's probably understandable in that the people behind it don't really care, as it is a WinWinEnding.
207* {{Averted|Trope}} [[NightmareFuel very horrifically]] during Sarah's nightmare in ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay''. James Cameron actually received fan mail from actual scientists thanking and praising him for his depiction of a nuclear explosion. The ''only thing'' it got wrong was the image of [[StrippedToTheBone Sarah's skeleton staying behind]] after the blast wave hits her. Everything else, from Los Angeles crumbling to people bursting into flames and blasting apart into carbonized dust? Pretty damn accurate.
208** Ironically, the trope is later played straight at the beginning of ''Film/TerminatorGenisys''. A nuke goes off over San Francisco as just a flash of light and a pressure wave. No sign of a thermal pulse or anything catching fire until the wave hits. One character even stares ''directly'' at the explosion without a hint of pain in his eyes. The streets also conveniently empty themselves of people when the blast wave hits.
209[[/folder]]
210
211[[folder:Literature]]
212* {{Averted|Trope}} in the first of Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' novels, when the Germans use the [[{{BFG}} 80-cm Dora railway artillery]] to destroy two alien ships, one of which holds the Race's nukes. The nukes' detonators go off, but no nuclear explosions occur, as the bombs are deformed by the ship exploding. However, the explosion does spread radioactive material over a large area.
213** Also in the first book, one of the first things The Race does when they arrive on Earth is to set off a number of nuclear detonations in the atmosphere, so that the [=EMPs=] produced will short out Earth electronics. They do not produce [[UsefulNotes/NuclearWeapons mushroom clouds]] when they go off.
214** It also, quite realistically, didn't help them much, because this was, well, ''[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII 1941]]''. Thus the "Earth electronics" were vacuum-tubes based, and these [[NoSell tend to shrug off the EMP]] because of the way they work and generally being quite crude, generally simply requiring restarting at worst, while the much more sophisticated, but flimsy solid-state electronics would be permanently fried.
215* ''Literature/SometimeNeverAFableForSupermen'' is the first science-fiction to involve several nuclear bombs, but it {{avert|edTrope}}s this, being surprisingly accurate and graphic. It has two third-shot accounts by witnesses of nuclear blasts. [[spoiler:By the way, every named protagonist is killed by the same nuke.]]
216* ''Literature/JackRyan'':
217** In ''Literature/TheSumOfAllFears'', the workings of the nuclear device were intentionally altered by the author in an attempt to limit the usefulness towards making RealLife nuclear weapons, [[WordOfGod as noted in the afterword]].
218** In his earlier novel (but not the film) ''Literature/TheHuntForRedOctober'', a Soviet submarine racing to intercept the ''Red October'' suffers a catastrophic reactor accident. In a realistic aversion, the reactor core doesn't explode, but simply melts through the reactor vessel and the ship's hull, causing it to sink.
219* Creator/LesterDelRey's 1956 novel ''Nerves'' features a nuclear reactor where nuclear isotope production is discussed in terms that sound considerably more like chemistry than nuclear physics: they talk about isotopes "reacting" with each other in such a way as to neutralize both of them, for example.
220* Hans Dominik's novel ''Atomgewicht 500'' ("Atomic Weight 500") similarly presents the creation of a super-heavy isotope that unlike the rather less stable intermediate material it's ultimately derived from is pretty much inert in and of itself but will conveniently start to give off energy if brought into contact with water as relatively easy if you only have the know-how and an excellent lab. In its defense, the story ''was'' written in 1935.
221* Creator/RobertAHeinlein:
222** {{Averted|Trope}} in Heinlein's short story "The Long Watch". The protagonist prevents a nuclear attack on the Earth by military forces on the Moon by taking the bombs (which are Little Boy style "gun barrel" devices, rather than the Fat Man type of "implosion device" more often featured in fiction) apart and smashing their plutonium cores with a hammer. [[spoiler:In the process, he exposes himself to enough radiation to reduce his lifespan to a matter of hours]], which is again realistic (although the absence of [[spoiler:radiation sickness]] is not).
223*** The narration is too vague to definitely point the type of the bombs described, but plutonium simply ''doesn't work'' in gun-type devices due to the pre-ignition issues: it is practically impossible to separate the weapons-grade Pu-239 isotope from the heavier and more reactive 240 and 241 isotopes, which would make a gun-type device to ''fizzle''. Thus, plutonium is only used in implosion-type warheads (which are more practical anyway, if more complex).
224** The first revision of "Blowups Happen", written in 1940 ([[ScienceMarchesOn two years before anyone had built a nuclear reactor]]), features a nuclear plant where ''tons'' of plutonium is kept just below critical mass. Any failure is going to be catastrophic, and the operators know it. The second revision, written in 1946, changes the reactor to an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerator-driven_subcritical_reactor accelerator-driven subcritical reactor]], a type of reactor which, if built with the fuel described on the scale described, really would be perpetually on the verge of going up like an atom bomb. (Real-world proposals for [=ADSRs=] call for using thorium rather than plutonium ''because'' it can't go critical.)
225** {{Averted|Trope}} in ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress.'' The Loonies' defense against nuclear missiles are mining lasers rigged to work as (relatively) long-range point defense weapons. Gunners are trained to burn out the missile's electronics, at which point the hydrogen-tipped missile becomes nothing more than a hunk of falling metal. Also in the novel, the protagonists fight back at Earth by [[ColonyDrop throwing rocks]] at them; an early example of mass drivers. The explosions caused by the rocks smashing into the Earth caused some to declare that the Loonies are dropping nuclear bombs. Even a few members of the Lunar government are confused, stating that it certainly looked like a nuclear bomb went off. Mannie, the protagonist, explains that they did the cosmic equivalent of striking flint to create sparks. And, as stated in the description for this trope, any sufficiently large explosion is going to result in a mushroom cloud.
226* Number 4 is {{subverted|Trope}} in Ian Fleming's ''Literature/JamesBond'' novel ''Literature/{{Moonraker}}''; the nuclear explosion is [[spoiler:passed off as a conventional one to cover up Drax's plot. The radiation had blown north]].
227* {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the ''Literature/{{Spellsinger}}'' novel ''Paths of the Perambulator'', where Jon-Tom creates a miniature mushroom cloud using magic and then muses that nothing is impossible in a magical world.
228* {{Parodied|Trope}} in Creator/DavidLangford and John Grant's parody disaster novel ''Earthdoom''. Two men lost on the London Underground are, for different reasons, both carrying quantities of radioactive material. When one of them is discovered and forced to stand at the end of his Tube train by a conductor, he -- being a newspaper science correspondent -- delivers an angry lecture about how this stuff can't just explode at the drop of hat, and if this train were to run into a brick wall ''right now'', nothing would happen unless there was a sufficient amount of material on the other side in ''just the right position''... At that point, the train runs into a brick wall. Guess who's standing on the other side.
229* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
230** ''Literature/FoundationSeries'':
231*** "Literature/TheEncyclopedists": InUniverse, Salvor Hardin makes a (deliberate) mistake in asking an ambassador from a nearby system if his planet has any plutonium ([[{{Technobabble}} praseodymium]] in the [[OrwellianRetcon original]] story) available for trade, since the reactors on Terminus could use more. When the ambassador brushes the question aside, it tips Hardin off that the ambassador's world has lost atomic power, since otherwise, the man would know that atomic power plants haven't used plutonium in millennia. Since they defeated one of the other local kingdoms, it stands to reason that [[UsedFuture none of the local galactic powers have access to nuclear power anymore]].
232*** "Literature/TheEncyclopedists": Mayor Hardin requests Lord Dorwin (representative of the Galactic Empire) to explain the accident on [[NumberedHomeworld Planet V]] of Gamma Andromeda from a year ago. In the original story, there was an explosion, whereas the [[OrwellianRetcon updated story]] calls it a meltdown. The Imperial representative doesn't know details, pointing out how [[UsedFuture the quality of technicians and technology has gone down]]. Concern about nuclear power plants exploding like a nuclear bomb was common in The40s.
233*** "Literature/TheMayors": Sermak and Bort discuss the accident in the Thessalekian Temple power plant from two months ago. In the original story, it exploded and took out five city blocks with it. The [[OrwellianRetcon updated story]] only describes radiation leaks contaminating the city. It had been caused by someone deliberately tampering with the controls. Concern about nuclear power plants exploding like a nuclear bomb was common in The40s.
234** ''Literature/TheGodsThemselves'': When a radio-chemist discovers a radioactive element that cannot possibly exist under the known laws of physics, it's noticed InUniverse. [[SubvertedTrope Further study reveals]] that the element comes from another universe where the laws of physics are sufficiently different that it can exist there!
235* {{Averted|Trope}} and {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in Creator/MurrayLeinster's novella ''Second Landing''. The protagonist needs to disarm a nuclear bomb extremely quickly and does so by shooting it with a bazooka. The bazooka blast renders the bomb unworkable but does not detonate it since that requires proper sequential detonation of the shaped charges surrounding the nuclear material.
236* {{Averted|Trope}} in the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' ExpandedUniverse, with ''Literature/HaloGhostsOfOnyx'' alone having numerous examples:
237** At one point, the Spartans actually use nuclear bombs for shields, since the same part of their design that gives them a stronger explosion also inherently makes them bulletproof.
238** Spartan Blue Team laughs at the Covenant's lack of understanding of nuclear weapons, as they watch a pack of Brutes wrestle the bombs into Styrofoam containers. They're bemused by how their alien foes [[LampshadeHanging treat the warheads with kid gloves]].
239** At one point, Blue Team also fires ''grenades'' into an elevator with the UNSC's "older" nuclear warheads, since they're "basically paperweights" without the arming codes.
240* {{Averted|Trope}} in ''Literature/TheAtrocityArchive''. A nuclear bomb is set and primed to blow an alternate reality to hell, but a member of the team realizes that's the last thing they want, as the bomb's energy will give the monster inhabiting the universe enough power to come through to ours. So, he manages to defuse the bomb by popping the caps without triggering the plutonium.
241* In ''Literature/ASwiftlyTiltingPlanet'', the following exchange takes place when talking about ''nuclear war''.
242-->'''Gaudior:''' You know some of the possibilities if your planet is blown up.\
243'''Charles Wallace:''' It just might throw off the balance of things, so that the sun would burst into a supernova.
244* In ''Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata'', specifically in the novel ''Hell's Faire'', there is a new nuclear-like weapon. It is described as having its primary radioactive isotope scattered in the area of effect, carbon-13, as having a very fast half-life. The trouble is, carbon-13 has no half-life at all because it is a stable isotope. (Carbon-14, on the other hand, ''is'' radioactive, if only very slightly; its half-life is on the order of five thousand years. Such a long half-life implies a very low decay rate, and consequently complete unsuitability for use in any kind of 'dirty bomb' application.)
245* In ''Literature/TheForeverWar'', frequent reference is made to nuclear weapons with yields in the microton range. One microton is just one gram, or approximately three one-hundredths of an ounce -- or, in other words, since we're talking about yields in terms of TNT-equivalent, barely a firecracker's worth of bang, and that's if we're being generous. In theory, it would be possible to produce a nuclear explosion out of such a tiny mass of fissile material, by increasing its density enough to drive it supercritical -- trouble is, there's no point; ''The Forever War'' is set in the future, and today we know how to make [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raufoss_Mk_211 chemical-explosive rounds]] which produce quite a bit more than a firecracker's worth of bang.
246* Creator/HGWells's novel ''The World Set Free'' (1914) features what may be the first-ever appearance of atomic explosives anywhere, but considering that it was written at the tail-end of the Victorian Era, the physics are quite dodgy. Extrapolating from the idea of radioactive decay as something with a tremendous amount of energy-releasing it over a long period of time, Wells' nukes work by somehow speeding up this process. Instead of releasing all of its nuclear energy in an instantaneous, massive explosion, the bomb speeds up radioactive decay to the point where you have a huge fireball that hangs around for several days before dying down.
247* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'':
248** The books do fall into the "radioactivity glows" fallacy, as it's stated on more than one occasion that the city of Vorkosigan Vashnoi glowed for several decades after the Cetagandans nuked it.
249** Joked about in the by a mention of neutron hand grenades, which should only be used by people with ''very'' strong throwing arms. They never actually appear on the page, probably because nobody's figured out how to set one off without being caught in the blast radius.[[note]]Of course, they could still be useful to a suicide bomber.[[/note]]
250* ''Tribulation Force'', one of the ''Literature/LeftBehind'' books, heralds the arrival of [[TheFourHorsemenOfTheApocalypse the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse]] with two ''100 megaton'' bombs being dropped on London and New York -- correction, on ''Heathrow'' and ''JFK'', as if such precise targeting would make the slightest difference to anyone with a bomb that would instantly annihilate everything within 100 km. 100 Mt is twice the yield of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuke ever tested, which was subsequently deemed even by the standards of SovietSuperscience to be wildly impractical. Regardless of this, it's treated by the narrative ([[ThrowawayCountry insomuch as it dwells on the consequences at all]]) as if the explosions had been smaller by an order of magnitude or four (i.e., closer to 10 kilotons than to 100 megatons).
251* The Chrysalis nuclear reactor in ''Literature/StarTrekTheEugenicsWars'' has several rods that can, with proper authorization, meld together to form a critical mass, which will make them explode. In reality, several rods of uranium slowly sliding together will simply produce a large lump of uranium rods.
252* ''Literature/BallLightning'': The power plant the eco-terrorists held up still uses the same technology as the Soviet-era Chernobyl plant, even though it is claimed as the most advanced in Asia.
253* Howard Browne's story "Twelve Times Zero" makes the hydrogen-reaction = fission error, but it also makes the far worse error of claiming that if a hydrogen reaction is ever started, anywhere in the universe, it will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire universe. How unfortunate for all life forms, then, that hydrogen reactions are what power the stars. We can expect Starmageddon at any moment.
254* In ''Literature/{{Worm}}'', [[spoiler:Khonsu, the fourth Endbringer]] uses a field of accelerated time to set off nuclear weapons.
255[[/folder]]
256
257[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
258* In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "Convictions" a terrorist who uses time bombs says he will have the titular station destroyed in an explosion that will be "as bright as the sun". This clues in Sheridan that his bomb is placed at the station's fusion reactor. As noted above, this is not how fusion reactors work.
259* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'':
260** In the pilot miniseries, there is a mushroom cloud, implied to be a large nuclear strike, less than one mile from where Boomer and Helo are fixing the Raptor. The two are not only alive, but also suffering no ill effects, nor is there any visible damage to the landscape near the mushroom cloud.
261** The show gets points for avoiding number 2.2, depicting detonations as bright flashes or pulses of light.
262** Helo also has to take radiation meds while on Caprica.
263** Nuclear weapons deployed against the Galactica are handled correctly. Starbuck destroys two incoming nukes by shooting them, rendering them inert, and when one reaches the ship, the resulting detonation causes fires but no cratering or shockwave damage to the side of the ship exposed to it.
264* ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}'' speeds up the effects of radiation poisoning in the interests of pacing. For instance, the "Red Forest" develops immediately from the radioactive cloud from the burning reactor, the leaves turning red by the morning after the accident. In actuality, this took place over several months. Similarly, the radiation burns from core exposure and handling radioactive material (such as the core graphite and firefighter uniforms) are shown as developing within minutes rather than hours.
265* ''Series/CSIMiami'': The episode "Dead Woman Walking" takes numerous liberties. The only thing they get right is the use of real-life spectrometry tools instead of a MagicalComputer, and an aversion of SicklyGreenGlow with a character even pointing out that "it's not like [the radioactive material] glows or anything". But the rest is cringe-worthy.
266** The "radiation is lava" trope is taken ''literally'' with an iodine-131-contaminated corpse burning up from radiation exposure.
267** Dangerous amounts of radioactive materials are shown kept in plastic syringes - that offer no protection - without any shielding in a simple fridge, which is a screaming example of NoOSHACompliance.
268** The decay product of I-131 is stated to be another isotope of iodine. That is wrong, since it turns to xenon (β[[superscript:−]] decay to Xe-131).
269** After just 2 days the lethally radiotoxic juice is somehow entirely non-radioactive. In real life, the half-life for I-131 is approximately 8 days. So if the juice only two days earlier was so "hot" it could kill, then it would still make radiation meters screech a mere quarter half-life later.
270** Following from the point above, they use chemical means to investigate the juice and get it doubly wrong because not only does I-131 '''not''' turn to regular iodine, but xenon... and since that is a noble gas it cannot be detected in the manner shown.
271** A person who is fatally poisoned by radioactive materials is allowed to roam free in public. That doesn't happen, ever. Even people treated with medical doses of I-131 are kept in the hospital ward until their "glow" fades, and the staff is made to wear lead aprons around them to keep the exposure to a minimum.
272* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
273** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon Aliens of London]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree World War Three]]", the villains' plan is to spark a nuclear war to reduce the Earth to radioactive chunks they intend to sell as fuel. However, nuclear detonations don't make the ground itself radioactive. The radioactivity is the result of particles from the fissile material in the bombs being spread around by the detonation.
274** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E742 42]]'', when a character gets possessed by a living sun, his body converts to hydrogen to match it... except that's exactly the opposite of what a sun does. Stars are mass in fusion, not fission.
275* The BigBad of the second storyline of ''Series/TheFlash2014'' Season 8 is a mass of black fire that burns with intense cold (except when it doesn't). According to Caitlin and Frost's mom, who's supposed to be an expert on the subject, this "is almost an exact description of how cold fusion works." No part of this bears any relationship to how cold fusion works.
276* The ''Series/{{Forever|2014}}'' episode "The King of Columbus Circle" features a Litvinenko-inspired murder that makes the below-mentioned ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' episode seem like a dramatized IAEA report. After realizing that the corpse of the week shows signs of radiation exposure despite turning down radiation therapy for his cancer, Henry rushes to the body as it's being wheeled out with a radiation detector and concludes:
277-->''"He was poisoned... by an isotope whose half-life is tens of thousands of years... which means everyone aboard this elevator is technically being irradiated too."''
278** Its half-life has nothing to do with whether or not they would be getting irradiated.
279** He has absolutely no basis for that conclusion, as he has no way of measuring its half-life.
280** It's also completely ''wrong'', since the isotope in question later turns out to be polonium-210... which has a half-life of around 138 days.
281* ''Series/TheGreenHornet'': In the episode "Invasion from Outer Space", an unarmed H-bomb (without an installed detonator) inside a truck can supposedly be set off by a detonator attached to the outside of the truck. This is physically impossible.
282* ''Series/{{House}}'': In the episode "House vs. God", the team investigates the sudden shrinkage of a woman's tumor. Foreman hypothesizes that it's radiation exposure, stating that "there are about a dozen appliances in every home that give off radiation" and Chase checks out her home with a radiation detector. It crackles merrily around every electrical device, and Chase complains about it to House:
283-->'''Chase:''' Do you have any idea how many electrical devices give off radiation?\
284'''House:''' All of them.
285** The idea of random radiation exposure suddenly shrinking a tumor without causing any other symptoms is ridiculous.
286** While it's true that everything electrical gives off radiation, it's radio-frequency EM radiation and not ''ionizing'' radiation, which is the kind a Geiger counter picks up (or would have any chance of affecting cancer). The only electrical devices in a home that produce any ionizing radiation are smoke detectors (which contain a tiny amount of mostly alpha-emitting americium-241) and CRT displays (that produce soft Bremsstrahlung x-rays from electrons hitting the phosphor). Even assuming they were defective and even with the probe jammed up right next to one of those two, Chase would have a hard time hearing anything above background.
287* The plot of the ''Series/Intelligence2014'' episode "The Grey Hat", involving the use of a computer worm to set off a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, would require FailsafeFailure of every single safety system in the plant. Including ''manually lowering the control rods to shut the reactor down''.
288* ''[[Series/GiantRobo Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot]]'': There are plenty of times in the show where characters get exposed to some form of nuclear energy and suffer no ill side effects. Most notably in the first episode, where Johnny and Jerry escape the Gargoyle's Island base as a nuclear bomb detonates to activate the title character. Johnny and Jerry stand within several feet of the blast and even look up at the fireball and aren't even physically mutilated from the heat and force of the blast. Giant Robo can also just sap nuclear energy like a sponge which, while explaining why Johnny and the others haven't died of radiation poisoning, still is hard to believe a robot can just suck out any form of nuclear energy and not suffer the effects from Electro-Magnetic Pulse. Granted, one could forgive this for being a show for children but given the frequency of danger the characters themselves get in you'd think they'd take the idea of nuclear weapons seriously.
289* ''Series/LoisAndClark'': There's an episode of where Lex Luthor has built a nuclear power plant and claims that not being able to shut down the reactor once it began its start-up sequence was a 'safety feature'. Also, apparently nuclear radiation is enough to destroy the kryptonite traces in Superman's blood but not enough to kill him. This is despite the kryptonite making him weaker than a human.
290* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' surprisingly got things mostly right -- the plutonium fission primary is removed from a 1950s-era hydrogen bomb by an Iraqi military officer with electronics experience, using the notes of a nuclear physicist, both from 2004. The main misrepresentation is to have the primary be a small gun-type bomb rather than the larger implosion primaries used in fusion bombs of that period; so that characters can carry it around in a backpack. However, [[spoiler:given all the time travel, who knows when that bomb design actually came from]].
291** GoingCritical is {{averted|Trope}} specifically by having it rigged to explode on impact, with the implication that it would not normally. [[spoiler:This fails until it is banged on repeatedly, leading to the implication that there was some rigged switch that had failed to trigger correctly]].
292** The hydrogen bomb is called ''Jughead'', after a real 1954 American fusion bomb test, and depicted with design aspects of the 1950s American Mark 16 and Mark 21 bombs.
293* ''Series/NCISLosAngeles'': One two-parter involving Soviet sleeper agents armed with nuclear weapons made the fission/fusion mistake by describing the weapons used as gun-type fusion bombs. The gun design consists of a small piece of uranium fired at the large piece to create the critical mass necessary for a runaway fission reaction, which the show described correctly. However, Eric calls it a fusion bomb, which (short version) uses a fission device to compress a core of heavy hydrogen to induce fusion.
294* ''Series/PersonOfInterest'':
295** In the episode "[[Recap/PersonOfInterestS02E16 Relevance]]", Agent Shaw comes across terrorists assembling a dirty bomb with "half a pound of cesium" (presumably Cs-137) in a glass ampoule. After incapacitating the terrorists, she picks up the ampoule ''with her bare hands'' and puts it in an unshielded plastic box to carry along with her. Both of those would be exceedingly stupid things to do and would have her showing acute symptoms of radiation exposure after the mission.
296** A later episode, "[[Recap/PersonOfInterestS02E20 In Extremis]]", gets pretty much everything it presents about radiation and radioactivity wrong.
297*** Finch's radiation detector is plastered with radioactivity trefoils. This would be like having flammability warning symbols on a gas detector, or high voltage stickers on a multimeter.
298*** Finch detects "alpha particle emissions" while just holding his probe up into the air. Never mind that he wouldn't be able to distinguish alpha radiation from any other kind of ionizing radiation -- alpha particles have a range in air of only centimeters, so if he was detecting them that way, it would mean that the alpha emitter was ''in the air'' and he was breathing in airborne contamination. Ouch.
299*** Upon being told that it's alpha radiation, Reese immediately concludes that "it's polonium", instead of the other hundreds of possible alternatives.
300*** Ingesting polonium means that radiation poisoning sets in immediately, and is invariably fatal within 24 hours. In real life, the first symptoms (read: nausea) wouldn't set in for many hours, and death would take weeks. Furthermore, if you knew early on that you had ingested polonium, there's a good chance that chelation treatment could save your life.
301* ''The Phantom Creeps'': This 1939 FilmSerial posits that a radiation poisoning antidote can be made by mixing in the original radioactive substance, a radioactivity measuring device can measure the radioactivity of an object several rooms away assuming the whole area isn't irradiated, and if the mad scientist ever completes his doomsday weapon it will be more powerful than dynamite.
302* ''Series/Space1999'': Nuclear waste stored on the Moon undergoes a chain reaction and detonates. The explosion is strong enough to throw the whole Moon out of the solar system, at a sizeable fraction of light speed.
303* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In one episode, Data crash-lands on a planet with a pre-industrial society and develops android amnesia, so he doesn't know the metal in the box he's carrying is dangerous, or even what the word "RADIOACTIVE" printed on it means. Thinking it harmless and grateful to the local village for helping him while he suffers his memory loss, he sells the plain-looking, gray pieces of metal to their merchants, who then sell it as jewelry, and people all over the village begin getting sick with radiation poisoning. With no memory of how such things work but with his capability to learn intact, Data spends the rest of the episode investigating the sickness and learning that the nondescript metal actually gives off dangerous, invisible energy. The realism takes a drop near the end when he cures the town with a liquid medicine akin to Rad Away in ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}''.
304* Season 7, Episode 11 of ''Series/TheWestWing'' concerns a potential meltdown. President Bartlet talks about a nuclear plant being "A reaction 20 times as powerful as Hiroshima," a wildly inaccurate figure which is akin to drawing a comparison between a birthday candle and a racecar engine.[[/folder]]
305
306[[folder:Music]]
307* Ultravox, "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes". The lyrics are about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in general, but the video instead involves a town being destroyed by a nuclear power plant meltdown, apparently instantly vaporizing the residents while leaving other objects intact. "REACTOR CORE OVERHEAT, EXPLOSION IMMINENT", etc.
308[[/folder]]
309
310[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
311* The ''Series/{{Thunderbirds}}'' episode "The Mighty Atom": a nuclear reactor goes critical and explodes, rather than overheating and melting down.
312** Said reactor also continues to function unless the seawater intake is destroyed (?) and requires the control rods to be inserted by hand in an irradiated room directly adjacent to the reactor vessel. And they apparently only have one radiation suit, so this can only be done one rod at a time. Really, it's no wonder The Hood decided to sabotage ''that'' reactor in particular.
313[[/folder]]
314
315[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
316* The ''TabletopGame/GammaWorld'' TabletopRPG adventure "The Legion of Gold". If damaged, a fusion reactor will detonate like an H-bomb.
317* {{Averted|Trope}} in ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'''s "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues". An old (pre-[[AfterTheEnd Whoops]]) nuclear reactor will eventually meltdown, not explode. Lots of other stuff in ''Paranoia'' explodes just fine, though, not infrequently in nuclear fashion. They even have nuclear hand grenades, with a blast radius ''way'' bigger than the range you can throw them.
318* Steve Jackson's ''TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}}'' started life as a card game, but has also had a set of Core books printed exporting things from the card game into a ''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons]]'' setting. One of these is the Plutonium Dragon, which halves in size every 15,000 years (leading to... interesting questions regarding breeding, as it gets smaller, not larger, as it ages) and has a special rule called Meltdown. If you kill it, then, depending on its age, it might possibly obliterate everything within a 5-mile radius.
319* Any implausibilities about nuclear weapons and radiation in ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}: Hell on Earth'' can be easily explained away with one phrase: "[[AWizardDidIt supernatural nuclear reactions]]." Yes, radiation ''does'' glow green, but that might only be because [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve everyone expects it to]]. Yes, there ''are'' rules governing the detonation of a "[[NeutronBomb G-Ray Bomb]]," but [[ChunkySalsaRule only one]] governing conventional nukes.
320* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' mostly averts these, but flirts with 1 and 3 a little. To wit: [=BattleMechs=] and many other vehicles are powered by fusion engines. By the core game rules, damaging those enough will simply cause them to shut down, disabling the unit. So far, so good. However, because some [=BattleTech=] ''fiction'', notably novels by Michael Stackpole, featured breached 'Mech reactors spontaneously and dramatically exploding every so often (in fact, "Stackpoling" became fan-speak for exploding reactors), an optional rule allowing for this to happen if desired also exists based strictly on the RuleOfCool (its lack of realism is explicitly noted).
321** A fluff piece in the Tech Manual sourcebook explains away the [=BattleMech=] reactor explosions as the effects of air hitting the inside of a very hot reactor vessel combined with ammunition and other volatile components detonating as well. Another in-universe fusion reactor explosion is also shown to be the result of a roof collapse dropping tons of snow upon the reactor's liquid sodium cooling system. The narrator noted the reactor was almost an innocent bystander.
322[[/folder]]
323
324[[folder:Video Games]]
325* The ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' series (ironically enough!), with [[SicklyGreenGlow sickly green]] radioactive waste that functions as ConvectionSchmonvection lava, the justification being that your H.E.V. suit [[HazmatSuit protects against the ambient radiation]] being emitted as the built-in Geiger counter is going off. It's not until you're actually in it that it starts draining suit energy and doing damage and even then it's presumed the on-board medical system administers treatment to prevent anything permanent.
326** The ''Opposing Force'' expansion pack has the black ops soldiers bring in a nuclear weapon. Shooting it will detonate it, resulting in a NonStandardGameOver.
327* ''Franchise/StarCraft'' has tactical nukes that give off the token mushroom cloud (even in outer space), despite not being powerful to bring down even one half-decent building.
328** Oh, and if you click enough on a neutral critter, it [[EasterEgg explodes with the same mushroom cloud]]...
329** In [[AllThereInTheManual the backstory]], they had [[UsefulNotes/PeaceThroughSuperiorFirepower much, much bigger nukes]]. With which they sterilized a ''planet''. Once they realized they could actually do that, even the Confederates weren't big enough idiots to keep 'em around. The "nukes" in-game would likely just be big friggin' conventional bombs, called nukes because [[RuleOfCool it sounds badass]]. (Low damage is more a matter of game balance.)
330** 'Course, ''[=StarCraft=]'' is just full of these [[UnitsNotToScale inconsistencies]], due to GameplayAndStorySegregation. The mushroom cloud is due to RuleOfCool and TheCoconutEffect.
331* The ''Franchise/{{Fallout}}'' franchise is built around Fifties-era mad science tropes, so the universe's nuclear physics and nuclear-powered devices [[ScienceMarchesOn don't match the real world]].
332** Fission-powered cars were commercially available before the Great War because a lack of oil meant that gasoline-powered cars were no longer economically viable. Their rusted wrecks still dot the wastelands and too much damage can cause them to [[ExplodingBarrels explode]], complete with cute little mushroom clouds.
333** The M42 "Fat Man" tactical nuclear catapult is the unholy spawn of a PIAT and a Davey Crockett, a man-portable nuclear artillery platform that pneumatically launches a warhead about the size of an American football. Like the cars, the warhead gives off a mushroom cloud when it explodes.
334** Ghouls are people who somehow survived exposure to a massive dose of radiation, like that of a strategic nuclear weapon, and become immune to the damaging effects of radiation. Instead, high radiation levels cause them to regenerate. On the other hand, they end up looking like zombies and some suffer mental degradation and become feral. The transformation usually occurs gradually after exposure to large amounts of background radiation over time, though a sudden massive dose can induce the transformation far faster (Moira Brown in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' if you detonate the bomb in Megaton and the NCR soldiers at Searchlight in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas''). ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' introduces two ghouls who induced the condition in themselves through radiation experiments and a vaguely-described serum respectively.
335** Brahmin are a strain of mutant two-headed cow that are a viable species unto themselves instead of horrific monstrosities that die moments after birth, that have replaced cows. Radstags from ''Fallout 4'' are similar, being two-headed deer with a pair of vestigial arms sticking out of its chest.
336** The Glow is a location in ''VideoGame/Fallout1'' that's still deadly radioactive almost a hundred years after it took a direct hit from a bomb. The external approach to Vault 87 in ''Fallout 3'' is even deadlier, with levels peaking at 3617 rads per second near the entrance.
337** In ''Fallout 4'', the residents of Vault 111 descends to the Vault just as a nuclear explosion goes off in the distance. Realistically, they all should have received at least major burns over much of their bodies from the thermal pulse.
338** ''Fallout 4'' also has a pocket nuclear sub with one remaining missile in a hidden submarine base. You can launch the missile which farts around the concrete ceiling of the base for a few seconds (If you read your quest log at this point, your character has apparently written in it "I just set off a nuclear bomb! ''Why am I still reading this?!''") and will explode, killing everyone in the base in a white flash, but not even knocking the outside door over. If you've run out of the area, as soon as you zone out of the door you are perfectly safe, not even radiation escapes.
339* {{Averted|Trope}}/{{justified|Trope}} in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''. When Snake reaches the room where the dismantled nuclear warheads are stored, he can't shoot for fear of damaging the nukes -- not because it might cause them to blow up, but because they might breach the radioisotope containers. Naturally, the guards will go all Rambo in that very room if Snake is discovered. They're wearing NBC suits and Snake isn't (although in [[VideoGameRemake the remake]], they use airfoil rounds).
340* In the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series, the icon for the uranium resource looks like glowing green rocks. (This serves, however, [[RuleOfPerception to distinguish it from iron resources]].) In some games in the series, nuclear reactors could be built in your cities for extra production, but they had a small chance to ''spontaneously explode'' (in ''Civ IV'', with the full impact of a thermonuclear missile!). In ''Civ V'', either realism or the fact that [[AwesomeButImpractical hardly anyone used them because of the risk]] led to this feature being quietly removed.
341* In ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'', ''every'' explosive is nuclear, and produces a mushroom cloud, even though the blasts are about the size of a fairly weak firecracker. RuleOfFunny and/or RuleOfCool are definitely in effect here.
342* ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games almost avoided this trope -- if your nuclear plant melts down, the surrounding buildings are left undamaged (except for a small risk of fire), but the fallout is scattered around the surrounding area, rendering it uninhabitable. In retrospect, they probably should have put a ''containment dome'' over those reactors or something. ''[=SimCity=] 4'' plays it dead straight though: an exploding nuclear plant creates a huge blue mushroom cloud, a massive crater and a big shockwave that can flatten half your city.
343* The nuclear missile in ''VideoGame/ShadowWarrior''. Nothing says {{BFG}} like a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfjqNPaLlXw nuclear bazooka.]]
344* The "World's Smallest Nuclear Bomb" in ''VideoGame/{{MDK}}'', complete with miniature mushroom cloud (about 6' high) and, showing some attention to detail, a ground shock wave.
345* The ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer'' series has many of these:
346** Exploding Nuclear reactors or weapons:
347*** One of the Soviet missions in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert'' takes place in a nuclear power plant that the Allies have sabotaged. Your technicians must activate the cooling systems on the reactor before the core melts down. However, if you fail, the game shows a video of an exploding atomic bomb, which is not the same thing ''at all''.
348*** In ''Red Alert: The Aftermath'' and ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2 Red Alert 2]]'' the Demolition Truck produces a nuclear explosion when destroyed. While they may have designed it to do this you think they would wait to arm it until they got it away from their own base. In ''Red Alert 2'' destroying the Soviet nuclear reactor causes a large explosion. The ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'' series includes the Chinese, with nuclear superweapons, a smaller war-head siege weapon, and a forest of nuclear power plants that can be (you guessed it) set off in a chain reaction of tiny atomic explosions. If the players purchase the nuclear tank upgrade to make their tanks move faster their tanks will explode if destroyed.
349*** Honorable mention: in ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3 Red Alert 3]]'', the Soviet Super reactor will cause a massive explosion when destroyed, which can destroy most units if they're too close - despite nukes canonically ''not having been invented yet''. (What do the plants run on? "[[BellisariosMaxim Chemicals.]]") Funnier still, it sports a nuclear symbol and a small chamber from which Cherenkov radiation leaks.
350*** In the Chinese campaign in ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals Generals]]'' the GLA uses a Chinese nuclear missile as a standstill bomb.
351** Weak Nukes
352*** In a few games in the series (notably the first ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert Red Alert]]''), nuclear missiles could barely destroy ''a tent'' when dropped right on it. Later games (and ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn'') had much more powerful nukes (Nod's nuke in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars'' can punch a pretty good hole in a base).
353*** Speaking of ''C&C3'', it features a Nod mission where the player must steal several nuclear warheads with a pretty pathetic force guarding them. If the player attacks the trucks the warheads detonate into a mushroom cloud. Hilariously, it doesn't even seem that the trucks themselves carry the active nukes; should one be killed, the game automatically drops a nuclear missile on it. [[FlatWhat What.]]
354*** For the first ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert Red Alert]]'', its somewhat true - however that is only for multiplayer, where a nuclear weapon hit the square targeted, then two squares out in a ring around the target. In short, some units standing ''next'' to a nuclear explosion could take ''no damage at all''. In Singleplayer, if a nuke is fired, it does not only cause the white flash, but vaporize everything in the blast radius. ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn Tiberian Dawn]]'' was similar, in that a missile launched from the Temple would obliterate anything.
355*** The Apocalypse tank in ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2 Red Alert 2]]'' can be upgraded with experience to fire nuclear ammunition, causing small mushroom clouds about the size of a tank but not necessarily killing anything in the vicinity. Infantry are notorious for surviving direct hits from tank shells. This is about as realistic as Tesla bombs dropped from the veteran Kirov airship that produces an ''electrical'' explosion. Oh wait, this is ''Red Alert'' we are talking about here, the universe where reality takes a backseat to [[RuleOfCool coolness]].
356** Fission equals Fusion: Cold Fusion Reactors (in itself impossible under current physics understanding) in ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals Generals]]'' and ''Zero Hour'' have Control Rods like Fission Plants. Heightening them (which ''costs money'') enhances the power output by 100% (300% for Superweapon General). At least these reactors don't explode, unlike their Chinese fission counterparts.
357* ''VideoGame/ManiacMansion'' may end badly with the nuclear reactor in the mansion's basement melting down -- which causes a mushroom cloud explosion obliterating everything in a five-mile radius.
358* Averted somewhat in ''VideoGame/MegaLoMania'' (''Tyrants: Fight Through Time'') a nuke will destroy a sector unless you have nuclear defense turrets to shoot it down, the sector then becomes uninhabitable.
359* Very nicely averted in ''[[VideoGame/SilentStorm Hammer and Sickle]]'' when, in the next to last mission, the main character says something like "When we find the nuke, just shoot it, or throw grenades at it." When the other characters complain that it's going to blow, he tells them getting a nuke to go off is a very difficult process, and that it's very unlikely that the bad guys ship it around armed and ready to go off. You get a nice dose of radiation poisoning that quite quickly drains your hit points though.
360* "Fallout" is used as a substitute for walls in the Chernobyl stage of ''Call of Duty 4: VideoGame/ModernWarfare''.
361* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' tends to have [[NoOSHACompliance open pools of radioactive waste]] as a type of [[GrimyWater hurt floor]], typically shown as being slightly less dangerous than lava. The toxic waste is called nukage and is stored in ExplodingBarrel drums; the game's booklet describes the damaging floors as "slime and other radioactive waste". There are radioactive warning signs, while the radiation shielding suit, Toxin Refinery, and Nuclear Plant maps suggest Union Aerospace Corporation was operating a nuclear power plant and waste handling facility on Phobos.
362* The ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'' games feature Phazon, a ToxicPhlebotinum substance so ridiculously radioactive that it can kill someone wearing a sealed, armored spacesuit in less than a minute. It's apparently also ''stable''. It's apparently also organic, biological, and sentient making it's "radiation" more like some kind of unique bioenergy field people can siphon off. [[spoiler:Given that it's actually the material component of a hyperdimensional intelligent entity whose main body is a ''planet'', there might be more to it.]]
363* ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'' features several variants of battlefield nuclear weapon; all produce the "columns of smoke" effect that would only normally be seen in a nuclear test.
364* ''Franchise/TouhouProject'': Utsuho Reiuji has power over nuclear fusion and fission, so it makes sense she'd be immune to the nuclear reactor in Former Hell. It makes less sense for Reimu and Marisa to not show any adverse effects either.
365* In ''VideoGame/Earth2150'', the [[{{Eagleland}} United Civilized States]] forces use nuclear reactors to power their bases. When a reactor is destroyed, it blows up like a nuclear missile, wiping out half of the UCS base... wait no, the explosion is ''completely harmless''. At the beginning of the game, the Eurasians destroyed the nuclear stockpile of UCS on Alaska, and the explosion from it was so powerful that it knocked Earth off its orbit, and slowly send it to the sun.
366* {{Averted|Trope}} and played straight in ''VideoGame/HeavyWeapon''. Attacking the atomic bombs that the [[DemonicSpiders Atomic Bomber]] drop will result in the bomb being destroyed (and not exploding), saving your ass from an otherwise-[[AlwaysAccurateAttack unavoidable]] OneHitKill. However, there is a huge lack of radiation poisoning should any nuke be used.
367* At the end of ''VideoGame/TheSimpsonsHitAndRun'', you get to cart around nuclear waste. While the barrels will ''[[MadeOfExplodium explode]]'' if you ram something hard enough... you don't get damaged (well, any more than normal). Yet somehow it's supposed to bring down alien technology.
368* In ''F/A-18 Hornet'', the B-57 tac-nuke is said to have a 20-kiloton yield, the same as the Hiroshima bomb, but only has a blast radius of 2,500 feet, less than half of that of Little Boy. Another gross error occurs in the mission "Neighbors" from the ''F/A-18 Korea'' expansion pack, where dropping a conventional bomb on a launch silo triggers the nuclear warhead.
369* ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriorsGundam 3'', or all things, actually manages to get a few facts right: the ''Anime/TurnAGundam'' has a union SP attack where it pulls a nuclear charge out of its chest and pitches it at the ground in front of it, creating a bright flash, a shockwave, and a sharp drop in the health bar of anything caught in the blast (FriendlyFireproof notwithstanding). If an opposing Ace Pilot blocks the charge in flight... it squibs and drops to the ground harmlessly, like real-world nukes will if they aren't exposed to the G-forces of a complete flight path.
370* ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' features a mission where the player squadron must fly cover over an isolated location where a group of students and intellectuals is trying to dismantle a nuclear weapon so it can never be used. The dismantling is being done by a physics grad student, [[ClosestThingWeGot being the most qualified person available]]. This event is treated as a very delicate operation, [[WireDilemma something in which any wrong move might inadvertently set off the warhead]], giving everyone in the area a scare when they think it is starting up. RuleOfDrama aside, they could probably have just torn the thing to pieces with spanners, crowbars, and industrial saws without worry since it takes a lot of deliberate effort to get something like that to arm, let alone detonate.
371** Partly {{justified|Trope}} as the player is in a [[CanyonChase canyon]] trying to keep the enemy forces AWAY from the group dismantling the nuke in question (which they can't even see to begin with), while most of the people working on the thing have likely never even '''''seen''''' a nuke let alone taken one apart. [[RuleOfDrama If the resistance had someone who knew a thing or two about nuclear weapons on the scene, the mission would've been over within a couple of minutes of the players squadron arriving on the scene]].
372* The ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'' series averts this trope, Nuclear missiles will explode and deal plenty of damage, but can be shot down safely with interceptor missiles.
373* The ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' mod Industrial Craft 2 has nukes and nuclear reactors. The explosion from a nuclear reactor is actually bigger than that of a nuke. Also, due to interaction with vanilla Minecraft's poisoning mechanics, you can cure radiation poisoning by drinking milk.
374* ''VideoGame/SystemShock'' features an anti-radiation hypo that is stated to "accelerate the half-life breakdown" of radioactive elements in the body. This would most likely simply increase the activity of the sample, so the exposure time would decrease, but the damage done to the body would increase as well.
375* ''Sub-Terrania'' by Zyrinx has a nuclear reactor that resembles a large spiked ball.
376* ''VideoGame/MechWarrior'', set in the ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' universe, carries over many of the boardgame's nuclear whoopsies. The fusion reactors in battlemechs have infinite range, their only limiting factor being OverHeating from firing weapons. Depending on the game, reactors can [[GoingCritical go critical]] when the mech is destroyed, with varying degrees of destruction; in ''Mechwarrior 4'' all mechs explode in a small blue fireball when destroyed, while in ''Living Legends'' destroyed mechs have a 20% chance to erupt in a massive mushroom cloud that can level forests and [[{{EMP}} temporarily short out electronics]]. However, most games do not feature these critical meltdowns and destroying the reactor simply disables the mech through power loss or ammo explosions.
377* ''VisualNovel/TheBottomOfTheWell'' is towards the realistic end of the spectrum; a lot of the tropes commonly wheeled out for nuclear apocalypses are absent. For example: no glowing green stuff (but plenty of grey radioactive ash); electronics being affected by an {{EMP}}; harm from prolonged radiation exposure rather than people immediately melting; no [[NuclearMutant Nuclear Mutants]].
378* Early beta ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}'' had uranium and plutonium as minable resources, which were green and pink respectively and safe to handle, but removed them before the full release. The megamod ''VideoGame/FrackinUniverse'' puts them back in, along with neptunium and thorium, and several fictional substances like irradium and ultronium. While the solid versions of these are also safe to handle, immersing yourself in liquid irradium is a very, very bad idea, as you will die in seconds without protection.
379* ''VideoGame/{{Satisfactory}}'' has nuclear power become available at its eighth tier, and uranium deposits can be found in various parts of the world. Obviously, all things uranium-related (uranium ore, uranium cells, uranium waste and more) are green and glowy. You also take damage if you stand near them without protective gear (and the damage increases drastically the more materials you pile up), though it's nothing permanent like cancer and can be fixed with healing items. On the side of realism, uranium waste CANNOT be destroyed (by throwing it in the trash or in the Awesome Sink) and will pile up and require more and more storage. It can be turned into plutonium cells (which are sinkable) but the process is extremely complex.
380* ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' takes place in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (after ''more'' goes wrong and it gets even worse than it is in real life). Radiation is a common hazard, but it acts nothing like actual radiation. Being dosed with radiation acts like a "poison" status effect, draining health until you rid yourself of the radiation. Which you can do either with "anti-rad" medicine or by ''drinking vodka''. And then, of course, there are all the irradiated mutants living in the Zone, most of which seem to have PsychicPowers of some variation...
381[[/folder]]
382
383[[folder:Web Original]]
384* ''Literature/ForAllTime'': In this CrapsackWorld where, among other things, the NuclearWeaponsTaboo never existed, plenty of countries have their own nuclear stockpiles and toss them around like snowballs. A united communist Korea, however, takes the cake when it announces the completion of a bomb called the Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer in 1970, which has a yield of '''250,000 megatons''' or 250 gigatons. This is virtually impossible to achieve from a logistical and engineering perspective. In OTL the largest nuclear device ever built was Tsar Bomba, which had a maximum theoretical yield of 100 megatons but was detonated with a yield of 50 megatons. If every nuke ever constructed were detonated at once, it would only yield about 4.8 gigatons. Even Edward Teller's theoretical Backyard Bomb, which would be powerful enough to destroy entire countries, would only reach 10 gigatons.
385[[/folder]]
386
387[[folder:Western Animation]]
388* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "[[Recap/FuturamaS3E20Godfellas Godfellas]]", the microscopic Shrimpkins make working microscopic H-bombs, complete with tiny mushroom clouds (in space, no less).
389* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'' -- the one with the equally hilarious [[NoSwastikas stand-in for Hitler]] -- when a nuclear weapon detonates with a mushroom cloud ''in space''.
390* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Let's start with the 90-gallon drums full of [[TechnicolorScience green, glowy nuclear waste]] and work our way out from there...
391** Considering every episode opens with Homer taking off his radiation suit in the middle of a supposedly radioactive environment, getting a radioactive isotope of some sort jammed in his shirt, then casually tossing said piece of radioactive material out on the street, its safe to say that realism is not high on the list of priorities for the writers. It’s even PlayedForHorror in a particular ''Treehouse of Horror'' comic: touching the rod erodes his skin to the ''bone'', with [[{{Bathos}} Nelson laughing in the background]].
392** When Sideshow Bob tries to destroy Springfield with an expired nuclear bomb, we're treated to [[RuleOfFunny a tiny mushroom cloud smaller than the bomb itself]].
393** Then there's the ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS9E4TreehouseOfHorrorVIII The Homega Man]]", where a NeutronBomb hits Springfield and turns everyone who wasn't killed (or protected by lead based paint) into mutants instantly. Not to mention, not only those reduced to skeletons had their clothes still somewhat intact but the buildings of town seem to have foundationally survived as well.
394** In the ''Treehouse of Horror'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E1TreehouseOfHorrorXV The Ned Zone]]", Homer blows up the power plant by simply pressing a button -- implying that ''the plant has a [[SelfDestructMechanism self-destruct mechanism]]''. The explosion did show a little bit more realism than "The Homega Man" in Ned's future vision [[spoiler:that became true despite Ned's efforts]] by showing what would be left of Springfield after a nuclear explosion, nothing more than a newly formed crater (though, no shockwave, fallout or nearby fires were created from the explosion).
395** Homer also managed to cause a meltdown in a nuclear testing site that contained ''no nuclear material at all''
396** And on ''at least'' two occasions, Homer has actually [[ExtremeOmnivore eaten]] radioactive material -- the aforementioned waste as a punishment from Mr. Burns and the plutonium he attempted to use as fertilizer in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E5EIEIAnnoyedGrunt E-I-E-I-(annoyed grunt)]]" -- [[MadeOfIron and survived, with no ill effects]].
397** In one episode, Mr. Burns erects a sign that describes the state of the power plant outside the sign. Homer accurately jokes to his coworkers that if there really is a meltdown, there won't be enough power in the system to power the sign to give out the 'Meltdown in progress: Evacuate' message. Nobody mentions that if there really is a critical meltdown, it would likely be too late for evacuation to do any good to anyone close enough to read the sign even if there was power.
398** The plant has been repeatedly shown to produce not only nuclear waste, but also noxious smog. The only gas that normally comes out of nuclear power plants is ''steam''. Of course, that assumes a well-running, up-to-code power plant, which the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is [[NoOSHACompliance far from being]].
399* In the second episode of ''WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko'', XANA's plot of the week is to cause a nuclear power plant to explode with a surge of electricity. Most power grids are, well, wired as a ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin grid]]'', meaning it's impossible to cause a precision surge of electricity as the episode implies. The nuclear reactor itself is just a heat source for a heat engine, so even if the wires didn't melt, the actual result would be that the turbines at the plant would be trashed and the reactor would go through a precautionary auto-SCRAM. And this does not even consider the impedance of the power grid. In real life, the power grid cannot even provide enough energy to start up a nuclear plant (gas turbine generators are transported to a nuclear power plant when it needs a "cold boot").
400* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' manages to get nuclear explosives right. One of the turtles manages to keep the nuclear part of an implosion bomb from activating... but the conventional explosion still goes off, to little more than a decent blast -- it's actually explained that this will not result in a full-scale nuclear detonation. It's not specifically identified as an implosion bomb, but that's the type this could actually happen with.
401* An odd {{subver|tedTrope}}sion of the "All mushroom clouds are caused by nuclear blasts" idea occurs in ''WesternAnimation/DragonAround'' with WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck and WesternAnimation/ChipAndDale. In the end, Donald tries to [[spoiler:blow up the stump with dynamite]], but instead [[spoiler:he is blown sky-high several times over in subsequent mushroom cloud blasts]].
402* In ''WesternAnimation/TheGodzillaPowerHour'', there's an episode where, no joke, exposure to uranium [[TimeTravel sends the protagonists back in time]]. ''To prehistoric times''.
403** Even better: How do they get back? [[TooDumbToLive By grabbing piles of uranium in their hands and molding them into balls]]!
404* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' episode "[[Recap/GargoylesS2Walkabout Walkabout]]", the nano-robotics [[AIIsACrapshoot Matrix]] gets loose as the Avalon Travellers show up. When Dr. Reynard mentions that they (Gargoyles and humans) have to stop the [[GreyGoo ever-expanding]] Matrix before it reaches the nuclear reactor, she points to... the cooling towers. Then the Matrix is talked into stopping before it gets its slimy tendrils into the reactor by... engulfing the cooling towers. At this point, it had covered/absorbed every bit of the research complex except the towers. Yep.
405* The backstory of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' involves an ostensible nuclear apocalypse whose long-term effects in the world's subsequent recovery have eventually amounted to what is for all intents and purposes a whimsical (and in some places ''literal'') SugarBowl. It could actually be described as a similar, yet ''vastly'' more cartoonish, case to that of the ''Fallout'' series in terms of fantastical mutations and other evolutionary effects. This is justified by the fact that the Mushroom War also explicitly involved weaponized sorcery, but still.
406* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'' had criminals steal a chunk of newly discovered highly potent radioactive isotope. Spider-Man recovers it, runs some tests on it, and after what he learns doesn't mind the criminals taking it back. Turns out the isotope has such an extremely brief half-life that in just a couple of days it has decayed to a solid chunk of ordinary lead. It goes completely ignored that such a high rate of decay should mean it is giving off enough radiation to be a death sentence to anyone handling it without protection and also giving off noticeable heat.
407* ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': The WesternAnimation/{{Batman|TheAnimatedSeries}}[=/=]WesternAnimation/{{Superman|TheAnimatedSeries}} episode [[Recap/SupermanTheAnimatedSeriesS2E16To18WorldsFinest "World's Finest"]]: When the Joker leaves Superman and Batman trapped in one of Luthor's laboratories (with a chunk of green kryptonite slowly killing Superman), Batman begins looking for ways to escape. He finds a container of hydrochloric acid. Batman notes that while it will take a week for the acid to eat through the wall of the room they're in, it will [[ArtisticLicenseChemistry destroy the kryptonite]] almost immediately. When the kryptonite dissolves, it doesn't release a burst of kryptonic radiation in typical cartoon-style, the resulting goo no longer contains enough radiation to hurt Superman sufficiently, and there is no longer enough radiation in the environment to prevent Superman from escaping. That is an ''incredibly'' short half-life.
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