Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible ...
Nuclear weapon design. Appearance. The first nuclear explosive devices provided the basic building blocks of future weapons. Pictured is the Gadget device being prepared for the Trinity nuclear test. Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package [ 1 ] of a nuclear weapon to detonate.
In nuclear weapon design, the pit is the core of an implosion nuclear weapon, consisting of fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it. Some weapons tested during the 1950s used pits made with uranium-235 alone, or as a composite with plutonium. [1] All-plutonium pits are the smallest in diameter and have been the ...
The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to 10 million tons of TNT (42 PJ). Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as 600 pounds (270 kg) can release energy equal to more than 1.2 ...
Plutoniumis a chemical element; it has symbolPuand atomic number94. It is a silvery-gray actinidemetalthat tarnisheswhen exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropesand four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon, and hydrogen.
Weapons-grade nuclear material is any fissionable nuclear material that is pure enough to make a nuclear weapon and has properties that make it particularly suitable for nuclear weapons use. Plutonium and uranium in grades normally used in nuclear weapons are the most common examples. (These nuclear materials have other categorizations based on ...
December 20, 1968. Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT [ a ] (11:29:21 GMT) on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, nicknamed the "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated ...
Demon core. A re-creation of the experiment involved in the 1945 incident. The sphere of plutonium is surrounded by tungsten carbide blocks acting as neutron reflectors. The demon core was a sphere of plutonium that was involved in two fatal radiation accidents when scientists tested it as a fissile core of an early atomic bomb.