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Nuclear Concept | A hydrogen bomb, also known as a fusion device, is a nuclear weapon that derives its explosive energy from nuclear fusion reactions. It is far more powerful than a fission weapon. |
A hydrogen bomb, also known as a fusion device, is a nuclear weapon that derives its explosive energy from nuclear fusion reactions. It is far more powerful than a fission weapon. The development of the hydrogen bomb, code-named "Super," involved solving two central problems: how to ignite the fusion material and how to make it burn efficiently. Scientists at Los Alamos developed a two-stage device, where a fission bomb is triggered (the first stage) inside the warhead, and the radiation from this fission device then compresses and ignites a special thermonuclear fuel (the second stage). Deuterium or lithium deuteride can be used as the thermonuclear fuel.1
The first successful test of a thermonuclear device took place in 1952 at Eniwetok, an atoll in the western Pacific, producing a crater over a mile in diameter and 164 feet deep. This device was 650 times as powerful as the primitive device dropped at Hiroshima. The Soviet Union successfully tested its first two-stage hydrogen bomb in 1955, and in 1961, detonated the largest known hydrogen bomb with an explosive force of fifty-eight megatons.1
Footnotes
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 4. ↩︎