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A boosted fission weapon usually refers to a type of nuclear bomb that uses a small amount of fusion fuel to increase the rate, and thus yield, of a fission reaction. The neutrons released by the fusion reactions add to the neutrons released due to fission, allowing for more neutron-induced fission reactions to take place.
Kinglet was a boosted fission primary used in several American thermonuclear weapons. [1]The W55 warhead for the UUM-44 SUBROC anti-submarine missile and the W58 warhead for Polaris A-3 were designed to use Kinglet, while the W47 warhead for Polaris A-1/A-2 were retrofitted with Kinglet to overcome the technical issues with the Robin primary the W47 was initially deployed with.
Conducted on May 25, 1951, Item was the first test of an actual boosted fission weapon, nearly doubling the normal yield of a similar non-boosted weapon. In this test, deuterium-tritium (D-T) gas was injected into the enriched uranium core of a nuclear fission bomb.
This is known as a boosted fission weapon. [5] If a fission device designed for boosting is tested without the boost gas, a yield in the sub-kiloton range may indicate a successful test that the device's implosion and primary fission stages are working as designed, though this does not test the boosting process itself.
In a boosted fission weapon or a thermonuclear weapon, the 14.1-megaelectronvolt (2.26 pJ) neutrons produced by a deuterium-tritium reaction can remain sufficiently energetic to fission uranium-238 even after three collisions with deuterium, but the 2.45-megaelectronvolt (0.393 pJ) ones produced by deuterium-deuterium fusion no longer have ...
According to researcher Chuck Hansen, the W34 Python was a gas-boosted fission primary used in several designs of American thermonuclear weapons.. Hansen's research indicates that the W34 Python primary was used in the US B28 nuclear bomb, W28, W40, and W49, and as a boosted fission warhead without a thermonuclear second stage in several other weapons.
RDS-7, a backup for the RDS-6, the RDS-7 was a 500 kiloton all fission bomb comparable to the US Mk-18, development dropped after success of the RDS-6S; 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
The W40 nuclear warhead was an American fusion-boosted fission nuclear warhead developed in the late 1950s and which saw service from 1959 to 1972.. The W40 design was reportedly the common Python primary or fission core used by the US B28 nuclear bomb, W28 nuclear warhead, and W49 nuclear warhead.