Fusion or Hydrogen Bomb

A brief description of fusion- or hydrogen bomb (H-Bomb) is given in Vol 1 of Encycl, p A499, under Atomic (or Nuclear) Bomb Refs 1) Hackh s Dict(1944), 363-R 2) CondChemDict (1961), 523-R(Fusion) ... 

Fusion or Hydrogen Bomb. See under Atomic Bomb A499-L... 

The destructive power of nuclear weapons derives from the core of the atom, the nucleus. One type of nuclear weapon, the fission bomb, uses the energy released when nuclei of heavy elements such as plutonium fission (split apart). A second even more powerful type of nuclear weapon, the fusion or hydrogen bomb, uses the energy released when nuclei of hydrogen are united (fused together). 

After nearly three decades of effort, fusion ignition, that is. the efficient bumup of deuterium and tritium has been accomplished only in one way, namely, the thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb. In this instance, obviously... 

In a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb, a significant fraction of the energy release occurs by nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission. The hydrogen isotopes, 2H (deuterium, D) and 3H (tritium, T), can be made to fuse, as ... 

Fusion reactions are accompanied by even greater energy production per unit mass of reacting atoms than are fission reactions. They can be initiated only by extremely high temperatures, however. The fusion of H and occurs at the lowest temperature of any fusion reaction known, but even this is 40,000,000 K Such temperatures exist in the sun and other stars, but they are nearly impossible to achieve and contain on earth. Thermonuclear bombs (called fusion bombs or hydrogen bombs) of incredible energy have been detonated in tests but, thankfully, never in war. In them the necessary activation energy is supplied by the explosion of a fission bomb. 

Such high temperatures have been achieved by using an atomic bomb to initiate fusion. This is the operating principle behind a thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb. This approach is obviously unacceptable, however, for a power generation plant. ... 

The use of larger particles in the cyclotron, for example carbon, nitrogen or oxygen ions, enabled elements of several units of atomic number beyond uranium to be synthesised. Einsteinium and fermium were obtained by this method and separated by ion-exchange. and indeed first identified by the appearance of their concentration peaks on the elution graph at the places expected for atomic numbers 99 and 100. The concentrations available when this was done were measured not in gcm but in atoms cm. The same elements became available in greater quantity when the first hydrogen bomb was exploded, when they were found in the fission products. Element 101, mendelevium, was made by a-particle bombardment of einsteinium, and nobelium (102) by fusion of curium and the carbon-13 isotope. 

Helium is also the result of fusion reactions wherein the nuclei of heavy hydrogen are fused to form atoms of hehum. The result is the release of great amounts of energy. Fusion is the physical or nuclear reaction (not chemical reaction) that takes place in the sun and in thermonuclear weapons (e.g., the hydrogen bomb). 

The first Fusion Type Atomic Bomb (also known as Hydrogen Bomb, H—Bomb or Thermonuclear Bomb) was tested at Eniwetock and proved to be successful. The bomb was of several megatons (millions of tons of TNT equivalent) (Vol 1 of Encycl, p A499-L R)... 

Fusion in H-bombs is ignited by a fission chain reaction of uranium or plutonium an atom bomb is used to set off the hydrogen bomb. The first hydrogen bomb test was conducted in 1952 on the Pacific... 

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... 

To understand this new development we must examine the mechanism of the so-called thermonuclear reaction of the hydrogen bomb which had already been successfully demonstrated by American scientists in 1952. Soon after the A-bomb, loaded with uranium-235 and plutonium, had been exploded for the first time in history in the summer of 1945, our scientists went to work on another type, the hydrogen or H-bomb. The principle of this weapon is somewhat different from that of the A-bomb. The destructive force of the H-bomb comes from the fusion of fighter atoms into a heavier one, rather than from the fission of a heavier element into lighter elements. 

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