NUCLEAR WARFARE Nuclear Weapons are explosive devices made to release nuclear energy. The first atomic bomb, which was tested on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, represented a completely new type of artificial explosive. All explosives get their power from the rapid burning or decomposition of some chemical compound. Such chemical processes release only the energy of the outermost electrons in the atom. Nuclear explosives involve energy sources within the core, or nucleus, of the atom. The A-bomb gained its power from the splitting, or fission, of all the atomic nuclei in several kilograms of plutonium. A sphere about the size of a baseball produced an explosion equ