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nuclear explosion

Explosion that occurs as a result of rapid release of energy from a nuclear reaction (fission or fusion)

EntityQ2656967

Also known as nuclear blast · thermonuclear explosion · atomic explosion

Subclass of: explosion

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device. Nuclear explosions are used in nuclear weapons and nuclear testing.

Overview

All data

30 statements · 13% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Cause: nuclear reaction
Has effect: mushroom cloud applies to part: atmosphere
ionizing radiation
nuclear fallout
radiation syndrome applies to part: human
radiation-induced neoplasms applies to part: human
nuclear winter nature of statement: hypothesis

On other databases

19 identifiers linking nuclear explosion across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

13%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 5, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). nuclear explosion (Q2656967). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/nuclear-explosion-Q2656967