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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.
The fireball created by the explosion had a maximum radius of 2.9 to 3.3 km (1.8 to 2.1 mi). [20] [21] [22] The maximum radius was reached several seconds after the detonation, during which the hot fireball lifted up due to buoyancy. While still relatively close to the ground, the fireball had yet to reach its maximum dimensions and was thus ...
From those pipes, mirrors would reflect early bomb light from the bomb casing to a series of remote high-speed cameras, and so that Los Alamos could determine both the simultaneity of the design (i.e. the time interval between primary's firing and secondary's ignition) and the thermonuclear burn rate in these two crucial areas of the secondary ...
Fallout can also refer to nuclear accidents, although a nuclear reactor does not explode like a nuclear weapon. The isotopic signature of bomb fallout is very different from the fallout from a serious power reactor accident (such as Chernobyl or Fukushima). The key differences are in volatility and half-life.
Physicist Edward Teller was for many years the chief force lobbying for research into developing fusion weapons.. The idea of using the energy from a fission device to begin a fusion reaction was first proposed by the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi to his colleague Edward Teller in the fall of 1941 during what would soon become the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort by the United ...
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 ...
The Ivy Mike device used liquid deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, making it a "wet" bomb. The complex dewar mechanisms needed to store the liquid deuterium at cryogenic temperatures made the device three stories tall and 82 tons in total weight, far too heavy and bulky to be a usable weapon. [ 3 ]
The first Ivy shot, codenamed Mike, was the first successful full-scale test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb") using the Teller-Ulam design.Unlike later thermonuclear weapons, Mike used deuterium as its fusion fuel, maintained as a liquid by an expensive and cumbersome cryogenic system.