Hydrogen bomb vs fission bomb how to#

The device is typically spherical, with the outermost shell being made up of conventional explosives. In thermonuclear weapons, an implosion bomb achieves critical mass through the inward compression of fissionable material, such as plutonium. For this to occur, weapons-grade fissile material - either uranium or plutonium - must reach critical mass.

Stage 1: Nuclear Fission: Thermonuclear bombs rely on a primary process called nuclear fission, in which a conventional explosion triggers a chain reaction that splits the nuclei of large atoms, resulting in a nuclear explosion.

The result is an extremely powerful, and theoretically limitless, explosion. How it WorksĮxact designs of this type of weapon remain a state secret, but most experts believe that the bomb is set up in two stages: The primary stage, fission, triggers the secondary stage, fusion. The blast produced an equivalent of 10.4 million tons of TNT, or about 700 times more powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The bomb (code-named “Ivy Mike,”) was detonated on the island of Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Marshal Islands on November 1, 1952. Their breakthrough occurred a little over a year into their research, and in 1951 the Teller-Ulam design was approved for testing.

Hydrogen bomb vs fission bomb how to#

The largest theoretical hurdle for the two was figuring out how to trigger nuclear fusion before the shockwaves from the fission blast reached their secondary device. Stanislaw Ulam, a mathematician working on the Manhattan Project, partnered with Teller to design the first hydrogen bomb.

Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb. Just six months later, newly elected President Harry S. That is, until August 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its own atomic bomb. He and others referred to this yet-to-be-discovered invention as the “ Super,” due to its unprecedented destructive potential.ĭebate about the possibility, and even the morality, of the Super caused many to shift their focus toward smaller fission devices. Edward Teller, a physicist studying nuclear fission, developed an interest in scaling up a nuclear explosion using hydrogen as fuel. Originsĭevelopment of the hydrogen bomb dates to the 1940s during The Manhattan Project. The combination of these two processes releases massive amounts of energy, hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than an atomic bomb. 42, 365 (1956).Thermonuclear weapons, sometimes referred to as Hydrogen, or “H-bombs,” utilize both atomic fission and nuclear fusion to create an explosion. Iudintseva, Izvestiia Timiriazevskoi s.-kh. Palladin, A Textbook on Biological Chemistry (Medgiz, 1939), p. Aglintsev, Dosimetry of Ionizing Radiation (Gostekhizdat, 1950), p, 464, Table 115. Libby, International Co-operation in Atomic Developments (Report No, 805 presented by the USA Delegation to the International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Geneva, 1955). Dubinin, Radiation Genetics and Heredity (in the press).Į.

The radiation dose to the tissues and the number of victims to radioactive fallout over all time are about the same for 10 megatons TNT equivalent of both types of bombs, These doses are (rounded off): The total amount of energy from the radioactive decay of the explosion products of a deuterium-tritium bomb is greater by s factor of three than that for an ordinary bomb. The case of s ground burst of a hydrogen bomb is also considered. The distribution of the radioisotopes in nature and in the organism is evaluated. In the case of a hydrogen bomb the active elements are C 14 and H 3, and for an ordinary bomb they are Sr 90, Cs 137 and C 34. Gonad and bone doses are calculated, with the resulting numbers of births with hereditary diseases and cases of leukemia (blood cancer). The pure hydrogen bomb considered is a deuterium-tritium bomb. An evaluation is made of the dangers to the population from long-lived radioactive products distributed over the whole globe after the explosion of an ordinary (fission) bomb and a pure hydrogen (fusion) bomb.