double flash

See also: double-flash

English

Etymology

double +‎ flash

Noun

double flash (plural double flashes)

1. The characteristic visual phenomenon produced by the atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon, consisting of a very brief, bright flash of light which dims rapidly, followed by a second, gradually brightening flash.
   • 2010 May, Norman Dombey, “Double Flash”, in London Review of Books‎^[1] (blog), London: LRB Limited:

     On 22 September 1979 at about 1 a.m. GMT, a US Vela satellite passing over the South Atlantic detected a double flash of light in the vicinity of Prince Edward Island.

   • 2015 July, Eileen Patterson, “The Double Flash Meets the Bhangmeter”, in Clay Dillingham, editor, National Security Science‎^[2], Los Alamos National Laboratory, archived from the original on 1 November 2020, page 12:

     One of the sensors on satellites in the U.S. Nuclear Detonation System uses a relatively simple device to detect the “double flash” of a nuclear detonation anywhere on earth.

   • 2019 September, William Burr, Avner Cohen, Lars-Erik De Geer, Victor Gilinsky, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, with Sokolski, Henry, Weiss, Leonard, and Wright, Christopher, “Blast From the Past”, in Jonathan Tepperman, Ravi Agrawal, Dan Ephron, Cameron Abadi, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Kathryn Salam, Sarah Wildman, James Palmer, Benjamin Soloway, Nina Goldman, editors, Foreign Policy‎^[3], The Slate Group:

     The detected signal was a “double flash” characteristic of nuclear test signals recorded on 41 previous occasions by Vela satellites.

2. (engineering) A system using two flash separators to separate phases of a working fluid.
   • 2018, A Rachmat, Nasruddin, A S Wibowo, A Surachman, “Exergoeconomic analysis and optimization of a combined double flash–binary cycle for Ulubelu geothermal power plant in Indonesia”, in IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science‎^[4], volume 105 (PDF), IOP Publishing Ltd, →DOI, →ISSN:

     Dipippo, in 2008, reported that the double-flash plant increased power output by 15-25% compared to a single flash plant under the same geothermal fluid conditions [9, 10].

Further reading

• Effects of nuclear explosions on Wikipedia.Wikipedia