4 ms·

I suspect the main "secret" around H-bomb design was the Teller-Ullam configuration of having a primary compress (and therefore heat) a secondary via X-rays: h

• pfdietz 5y ago
  The composition of fallout from US tests was also a big clue.
• cogman10 5y ago
  The hardest part about making an H-Bomb is first making a fission bomb. Once you have that, an H-Bomb is trivial by comparison. An H-Bomb is very simply just detonating a fission bomb with enough fusible material to trigger nuclear fusion. Indeed "knowing it's possible" is really all it takes.
  • justin66 5y ago
    > Once you have that, an H-Bomb is trivial by comparison. An H-Bomb is very simply just detonating a fission bomb with enough fusible material to trigger nuclear fusion. That's a completely inaccurate way of characterizing the difficulty of developing the early fusion bombs. The Russians spent years developing a hydrogen bomb they knew wasn't very good [0] because of the difficulty involved in a more sophisticated design, like the one the parent poster mentioned. The design the parent poster mentioned took also took years to develop - Teller advocated for the idea of the hydrogen bomb during the war, but had the "critical idea" in 1951. The first bomb he built in 1952 was totally impractical as a weapon. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_4 (development was also discussed in one of Andrei Sakharov's memoirs)