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I was really surprised when I read the quote, they were worried about a runaway fusion reaction! I had heard this story before but always thought they were worr
by seiferteric 10y ago
I was really surprised when I read the quote, they were worried about a runaway fusion reaction! I had heard this story before but always thought they were worried about "burning" nitrogen in the chemical sense, ie. creating nitrogen oxides. It seems doubly ridiculous to worry about fusion when we can't even get a fusion reactor to work.
- tim333 10y agoWe can get fusion to work in H-bombs so it might not be that silly.
- seiferteric 10y agoTrue, but H-bombs don't really produce runaway chain fusion reactions afaik. The conditions exist only momentarily due to the heat and pressure from the fission devices, then quickly subside and the fusion stops.
- idlewords 10y agoIt wasn't a ridiculous thing to worry about at all.
- hawkice 10y agoYeah, I'm with the scientists on this. They had built the first bombs only a couple years after the first nuclear pile (a sustained nuclear chain reaction), and it was clear what they were trying to do was massively in excess of that. Taking a moment to make sure Earth didn't become a nuclear pile would be great. n.b. That first nuclear pile was in December 1942, which is way later than even I thought it was. This stuff was happening fast.
- seiferteric 10y agodidn't really mean it was ridiculous for them to think about, just that it seems so now in retrospect.