TABLE OF CONTENTS Many readers involved with the electromagnetic compatibility of commercial electronics may have no direct need to understand the effect of the radio frequency pulse produced by a nuclear weapon on their equipment. It is suggested however that this section contains a good example of a transient RF pulse and how it interacts with equipment. Many of the general points made earlier in the chapter about convolution and equipment impulse response are illustrated.
Enrico Fermi suggested that electromagnetic effects would be observed in the first nuclear explosion in 1945 [29]. In 1954 Garwin at Los Alamos estimated the parameters of the pulse that would be radiated by an asymmetric gamma source in the exponential growth phase of the NEMP signal. In 1956 other workers in the USA studied the possibility of using the EMP pulse from a nuclear weapon to detonate magnetic mines. The first serious attempt to understand the impact of NEMP on possible target equipments got underway with the Minuteman missile programme in 1960.
The electromagnetic pulse is only one of a number of effects produced by a nuclear weapon. In order of promptness following the detonation, the others are gamma, optical and x-ray pulses, EMP, neutrons, thermal effects, blast/overpressure, dust, debris and fallout. Details of weapon effects are of course still classified, but readers involved in this field are referred to courses such as those run by RMCS [30]. In this text it is intended only to acquaint the reader with a...
