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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.
Orange Herald was a fusion boosted British fission nuclear weapon (called a core-boosted device by the British), comprising a U-235 core containing a small amount of lithium deuteride . [1] [2] 'Herald' was suitable for mounting on a missile, utilizing 117 kg of U-235. However, Britain's annual production of U-235 was only 120 kg at this time ...
Some researchers have examined the use of antimatter [3] as an alternative fusion trigger, mainly in the context of antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion but also nuclear weapons. [4] [5] [6] Such a system, in a weapons context, would have many of the desired properties of a pure fusion weapon. The technical barriers to producing and ...
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.
This casing, called the pusher, thus has three jobs: to keep the secondary cool; to hold it, inertially, in a highly compressed state; and, finally, to serve as the chief energy source for the entire bomb. The consumable pusher makes the bomb more a uranium fission bomb than a hydrogen fusion bomb. Insiders never used the term "hydrogen bomb". [29]
The radiation from the exploding fission primary brought the fuel in the fusion secondary to critical density and pressure, setting off thermonuclear (fusion) chain reactions, which in turn set off a tertiary fissioning of the bomb's 238 U fusion tamper and casing. Consequently, this type of bomb is also known as a "fission-fusion-fission" device.
Though nuclear fusion was technically achieved, it did not have the scaling property of a staged weapon, and their first hydrogen bomb test, Joe 4, is considered a hybrid fission/fusion device more similar to a large boosted fission weapon than a Teller–Ulam weapon (though using an order of magnitude more fusion fuel than a boosted weapon).
Edward Teller, often referred to as the "father of the hydrogen bomb" Fusion reactions do not create fission products, and thus contribute far less to the creation of nuclear fallout than fission reactions, but because all thermonuclear weapons contain at least one fission stage, and many high-yield thermonuclear devices have a final fission ...