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Maybe this is a dumb question: I thought all nuclear bombs were fission, not fusion. How could fusion be at the center of a fission bomb? I didn’t even know fu
by throwoutway 4y ago
Maybe this is a dumb question: I thought all nuclear bombs were fission, not fusion. How could fusion be at the center of a fission bomb?
I didn’t even know fusion had a weapons research program
- orlp 4y agoI'm curious what you think the hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb would split into.
- sweetheart 4y agoSheesh, tough crowd.
- cnasc 4y agoWe actually got to fusion bombs pretty quickly, in the 1950s. Presumably almost all practical nuclear weapons since then are fission bombs
- dboreham 4y agoThey're two stage: fission primary and fusion secondary.
- pfdietz 4y agoThree stage: the fusion secondary typically uses a uranium pusher, which undergoes fission from the fusion neutrons.
- panick21_ 4y agoIn theory you could do a fusion bomb as a stage, that would make be insane. At least if I understand that correctly.
- spaetzleesser 4y agoI thought the fusion produces a lot of neutrons that then cause a ton of more fission.
- khuey 4y agoAll nuclear bombs involve fission. Some (termed "thermonuclear") involve fusion. A fission first stage is detonated to ignite a (much higher yielding) fusion second stage. Most bombs deployed today are thermonuclear simply because it's the most sensible way to scale up the yield of a weapon.
- throwoutway 4y agoThis makes sense, thank you
- jcims 4y agoIsn’t the fissile material the only reason there is residual radiation/fallout from fusion devices?
- mlindner 4y agoA lot of materials are fissile in the presence of a fusion reaction.
- benreesman 4y agoNitpick, AFAIK (which is t far) the real crust-busters (e.g. Tsar Bomba) use yet a third stage of fissile material that gets rapidly burnt up at truly absurd neutron densities to get that last 40-90 Mt and as a result are dirty as all hell. The Soviets turned that weapon down from 100Mt designed yield to 50 because there was no way to keep it from just radiating everything.
- anonymousDan 4y agoNope, the most powerful bombs use both - in effect they use fission to perform fusion. Obviously the problem with this for energy production is that it is not a very controlled reaction.
- pfdietz 4y agoAnd then they use the neutrons from fusion to cause more fission.
- smueller1234 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon The "hydrogen" in "hydrogen bomb" relates to fusion. In a nutshell, these types of devices use a fission bomb to create the environment (pressure/temperature) that causes lighter atoms to undergo fusion, which significantly boosts the explosive yield compared to a pure fission bomb.
- donkarma 4y agothey have a fission primary stage to ignite the fusion secondary stage
- wiml 4y agoUsually if it's called an "atom bomb" or "A-bomb" it's pure fission, and a nuclear bomb, thermonuclear bomb, or hydrogen bomb is fission-fusion-fission. A fission bomb compresses the hydrogen to cause it to fuse, and the extra energy and neutrons from the hydrogen fusion cause a whole lot of additional fission in the uranium tamper. For details look up the "Teller-Ulam" design, wikipedia has some good descriptions.