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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 reaction energy (the "Q-value") is positive for exothermal reactions and negative for endothermal reactions, opposite to the similar expression in chemistry. On the one hand, it is the difference between the sums of kinetic energies on the final side and on the initial side.
The reaction cross section (σ) is a measure of the probability of a fusion reaction as a function of the relative velocity of the two reactant nuclei. If the reactants have a distribution of velocities, e.g. a thermal distribution, then it is useful to perform an average over the distributions of the product of cross-section and velocity.
A nuclear weapon [a] is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.
Boosted fission weapons increase yield beyond that of the implosion design, by using small quantities of fusion fuel to enhance the fission chain reaction. Boosting can more than double the weapon's fission energy yield. Staged thermonuclear weapons are arrangements of two or more "stages", most usually two. The first stage is normally a ...
The burst of neutrons created in the thermonuclear reaction is then free to escape the bomb, outpacing the physical explosion. By designing the thermonuclear stage of the weapon carefully, the neutron burst can be maximized while minimizing the blast itself. This makes the lethal radius of the neutron burst greater than that of the explosion ...
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have achieved nuclear fusion ignition—a scientific energy breakeven. Here’s what you need to know.
The uncontrolled fusion of hydrogen into helium is known as thermonuclear runaway. A frontier in current research at various institutions, for example the Joint European Torus (JET) and ITER, is the development of an economically viable method of using energy from a controlled fusion reaction. Nuclear fusion is the origin of the energy ...