Originally Posted by
Excargodog
I thought we GAVE THEM Permissive Action Links so stuff like that wouldn’t happen?
If that was a WSA, there may be special material scattered over a wide area. You have to sort of hope it was their nuke scramjet.
PALs probably don't apply to nuclear power units, including nuclear aircraft engines. PALs also only prevent unauthorized use... this sounds authorized to me.
Although the Russians have actually built power units capable of going prompt critical, so maybe that thing could have used a PAL. It frankly looks like a powerful enough explosion that it might have been very low-grade prompt critical, ie a small percentage of the core graduated from power core to bomb status for just a tiny moment. That's what happened at chernobyl too.
Worth noting that all western power cores are designed with core physics such that they are self-damping, ie runaway power produces material affects which dampens the chain reaction. Russians don't seem to see the need though.