This is the "H" or "thermonuclear" part of the bomb. When this hydrogen-rich mix is heated to 100 million degrees, the deuterium and tritium atoms "fuse" together, releasing enormous amounts of energy. The main fusion reaction involves concentrated deuterium and tritium (both heavy isotopes of hydrogen) - which become spontaneously available when neutrons from the first stage explosion bombard a solid material called "lithium deuteride" located in the central column. The second stage explosion is due to nuclear fusion in the central column. Boosted or not, however, the only importance of this first-stage explosion is to irradiate and heat the material in the central column to 100 million degrees celsius so that a much more powerful fusion reaction can be started there. Tritium is often added to the centre of the plutonium core to "boost" the fission explosion with some additional fusion energy. The energy release at this stage is mainly due to nuclear fission - because the atoms of plutonium are split. The first stage, called the "trigger" (the black ball at the top), is a small plutonium bomb similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. In the photo, he is standing on the steps of the US Supreme Court holding a cut-away model of the H-bomb.Īn H-bomb is a three-stage weapon: fission, fusion, and then fission again. Howard Morland wrote a magazine article explaining how an "H-Bomb" - or "thermonuclear bomb" - is made, using only publicly available information. But maybe it’s time we start looking to use nuclear fusion for something else.How To Make an H-Bomb (or Thermonuclear bomb) How To Make an H-Bomb (or Thermonuclear bomb) If we wanted to, we could build a bomb even more powerful than the Tsar Bomba. (It also maps out the waste laid by historic nuclear blasts such as the Trinity blast in New Mexico in 1945, and the 1961 Tsar Bomba blast in Novaya Zemlya, Russia.) The Tsar Bomba is the largest manmade explosion to date, sending a mushroom cloud up to more than 130,000 feet in altitude-about 4.5 times the height of Mount Everest-as it sent shockwaves around the globe three times over.Ĭurious to see how you’d fare in the event that a nuclear bomb were dropped on a big city near you? NUKEMAP, created by Alex Wellerstein, charts out the impacts of a nuclear blast on cities around the world. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba, set off by the Soviet Union in 1961, produced an insane 50-megaton blast-about 3,333 times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb that leveled an entire city. The B83? 1.2 megatons, equaling 1,200,000 tons of TNT, making it 80 times more powerful than the Little Boy. The Fat Man produced an explosion of about 21 kilotons. During a February 24 address to Moscow, Putin warned other countries that any attempt to intervene would lead to “consequences you have never seen,” which has been interpreted as a veiled threat of nuclear warfare.Īs the above video from YouTube channel RealLifeLore illustrates, the blast from the Little Boy released about 15 kilotons of energy, equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT, and sent a mushroom cloud up to about 25,000 feet. These are the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, to date, and let’s hope it stays that way-because some of the nuclear weapons today are over 3,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.Īnd there are new fears, stoked by the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could deploy nuclear weapons against the West. The atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II-codenamed “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” respectively-caused widespread destruction, leveled cities, and killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people in Hiroshima (about 20,000 of which were soldiers), and between 39,000 and 80,000 in Nagasaki.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |