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ki·lo·ton | \ ˈki-lə-ˌtən 
also -ˌtän \
also -ˌtän \Definition of kiloton
1 : 1000 tons
2 : an explosive force equivalent to that of 1000 tons of TNT
Examples of kiloton in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web That’s enough to flatten a city or industrial target: by comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was just 16 kilotons.
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Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "A New and Controversial U.S. Nuclear Weapon Goes to Sea," 30 Jan. 2020 Current American bombs can range from 50 to 1,200 kilotons, so the explosion would be that much bigger.
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Fox News, "What happens in a nuclear apocalypse?," 13 Feb. 2020 The first test, Able, was a 23 kiloton atomic bomb dropped from a B-29 bomber and set to explode at 1,500 to 2,000 feet.
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Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "Nearly 75 Years Later, Scientists Map the Craters Created by Underwater Nuclear Tests," 12 Dec. 2019 The Castle Bravo bomb was exponentially more powerful than previous tests, and had an estimated yield of 15 megatons—or 15,000 kilotons.
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Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "Nearly 75 Years Later, Scientists Map the Craters Created by Underwater Nuclear Tests," 12 Dec. 2019 By comparison, the yield of the Hiroshima bomb was just 15 kilotons.
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Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "The U.S.'s Aging 'Nuclear Coffin' Is an Ecological Disaster Waiting To Happen," 20 May 2019 North Korea’s first nuclear test took place in 2006 and had a estimated yield of .7 to 2 kilotons.
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Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, "North Korea's Latest Nuclear Test Was More Powerful Than We Thought," 5 June 2019 Earlier this year, it was announced that in late 2018, a space rock had exploded above the Earth's surface with an impact energy of 173 kilotons.
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David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, "A City-Killing Asteroid Got Uncomfortably Close to Earth," 30 July 2019 The resulting shock wave was as powerful as a 550 kiloton nuclear explosion—and the Tunguska object was probably much larger.
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Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, "New research on Tunguska finds such events happen less often than we thought," 17 July 2019
See MoreThese example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'kiloton.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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Time Traveler for kiloton
The first known use of kiloton was in 1950
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