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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.
It tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1957 (Operation Grapple), making it the third country to do so after the United States and Soviet Union. [ 56 ] [ 57 ] The British Armed Forces maintained a fleet of V bomber strategic bombers and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) equipped with nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
RDS-27, 250 kiloton bomb, a 'boosted' fission bomb tested 6 November 1955. RDS-37, 3 megaton bomb, the first Soviet two-stage hydrogen bomb, tested 22 November 1955; RDS-220 Tsar Bomba an extremely large three stage bomb, initially designed as a 100-megaton-bomb, but was scaled down to 50 megatons for testing. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
In large, megaton-range hydrogen bombs, about half of the yield comes from the final fissioning of depleted uranium. [11] Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described to the right, but it is possible to add additional fusion stages—each stage igniting a larger amount of fusion fuel in the next stage.
Developed between 1956 and 1961 as the Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms race with the United States, the Tsar Bomba - the King of Bombs - was the largest hydrogen bomb ever and was claimed ...
Test No. 6, First hydrogen bomb test – June 17, 1967; CHIC-16, 200 kt-1 Mt atmospheric test – June 17, 1974 [25] #21, Largest hydrogen bomb tested by China (4 megatons) - November 17, 1976 #29, Last atmospheric test – October 16, 1980. This is to date the last atmospheric nuclear test by any country. [26]
The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage bomb with a Trutnev-Babaev [28] second- and third-stage design, [29] with a yield of 50 Mt. [4] This is equivalent to about 1,570 times the combined energy of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, [30] 10 times the combined energy of all the conventional explosives used in World War II, [31] one ...
The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.As the country that invented nuclear weapons, the U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons on another country, when it detonated two atomic bombs over two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.