Fusion bombs

Deuterium is used as a moderator to slow down neutrons. Tritium atoms are also present but in much smaller proportions. Tritium is readily produced in nuclear reactors and is used in the production of the hydrogen (fusion) bomb. It is also used as a radioactive agent in making luminous paints, and as a tracer. 

In view of the success of von Neumann s machine-based hydrodynamics in 1944, and at about the time when the fission bomb was ready, some scientists at Los Alamos were already thinking hard about the possible design of a fusion bomb. Von Neumann invited two of them, Nicholas Metropolis and Stanley Frankel, to try to model the immensely complicated issue of how jets from a fission device might initiate thermonuclear reactions in an adjacent body of deuterium. Metropolis linked... 

After the war, Bethe became deeply involved in the peaceful applications of nuclear power, in investigating the feasibility of developing fusion bombs and bal-... 

The first hydrogen (fusion) bomb to be tested by the United States is exploded at Bikini Atoll. 

A hydrogen bomb, which uses nuclear fusion for its destructive power, is three bombs in one. A conventional explosive charge triggers a fission bomb, which in turn triggers a fusion reaction. Such bombs can be considerably more powerful than fission bombs because they can incorporate larger masses of nuclear fuel. In a fission bomb, no component of fissionable material can exceed the critical mass. In fusion, there is no critical mass because fusion begins at a threshold temperature and is independent of the amount of nuclear fuel present. Thus, there is no theoretical limit on how much nuclear fiiel can be squeezed into a fusion bomb. 

Barnaby, F. Is there a pure-fusion bomb for sale Internat Defence Review (1 Jun 1994) 79. 

Defense high-level wastes are those produced as a result of military research during the recovery of the uranium and plutonium used in making fission and fusion bombs. 

Temperatures in the range of 20 to 100 million degrees Celsius are required for fusion reactions. For this reason, a hydrogen bomb is triggered by a conventional fission atomic bomb. The atomic bomb produces the tremendous heat necessary to fuse hydrogen nuclei therefore, fusion bombs are often referred to as thermonuclear. The United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on November 1, 1952. This bomb was based on the fusion of deuterium ... 

Edward Teller, one of the brilliant physicists who fied Hungary before the war and a key member of the Los Alamos team, had no doubts about the right course of action. He urged the US government to pursue the idea he had discussed with Fermi in 1942 a superbomb that liberated nuclear energy not by fission but by fusion. The fusion bomb creates, for a blinding instant, an artificial sun. 

Bombs, Fusion. Bombs that depend upon nuclear fusion for release of their energy. See Vol l,p A499, under Atomic(or Nuclear) Bomb... 

Thus a Fusion Bomb, (Hydrogen or H Bomb, a Thermonuclear Bomb) must contain meun of initiating both types of atomic explosion The three bombs exploded during WWII — in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, over Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945, and over Nagasaki on Aug 9, 1945 — were all of the fission type and of tens of kiloton(thousands... 

Oi tons Oi irux cijluvaiciii yiciu. i-noiia since the war have had two aims. One is the development of fusion bombs. The first one was tested at Eniwetok in the spring of 1948. The bomb of several megaton (millions of... 

Thallous Azidodithiocarbonate A637-L Thallous-Thallic Azide A623-R Thermonuclear or Fusion Bomb. See under Atomic Bomb A499-L Thorium Dicarbide A82-R Tin Azide A624-L Titanium Carbide A82-R Titanous Chloride Method for Determination of Nitrobenzene in Aniline A415-R TNT Recovery from Scrap Amatol A161-L Toluidine. See under Aminotoluenes A265-R... 

Figure 6.4 This immense explosion is an example of a fusion bomb, one in which small atoms combine to create a larger atom. The effect of fusion can be much stronger than splitting atoms, or fission.

The practical problems of building a fusion power plant are incredible, however, and scientists are still a long way from achieving that goal. A much simpler challenge, however, is to construct a fusion power planf that does not need to be controlled, that is, a fusion bomb. 

The core of the fusion bomb would consist of a fission bomb, such as the one they were then developing. That core could then be surrounded by a casing filled with isotopes of hydrogen. Isotopes of hydrogen are various forms of hydrogen that all have a single proton in their nucleus, but may have zero, one, or two neutrons. The nuclei of the hydrogen isotopes are the proton, the deuteron, and the triton. 

From a military standpoint, the firsion bcmb had one powerfirl advant e over the fissicn bomb. For technical reasons, there is a limit to the size one can make a fissicn bcmb. But there is no technical limit on the size of a fusion bomb. One simply makes the casir surrotmding the fission bomb largpr and larger, until there is no longer a way to lift the bomb into the air so that it can be dropped on an enemy. 

On August 20, 1953, the Soviet Union announced the detonation of the world s first fusion bomb. It was about 1,000 times more powerfirl than was the fissicn bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima less than a decade earlier. The Soviet Union (now Russia) and the... 

United States became proficient at manufacturing fusion bombs on an almost assembly-line schedule. 

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