Thermonuclear bomb. The hydrogen bomb is a modern weapon of mass destruction
Thermonuclear weapons (H-bomb)- a type of nuclear weapon, the destructive power of which is based on the use of the energy of the nuclear fusion reaction of light elements into heavier ones (for example, the fusion of one nucleus of a helium atom from two nuclei of deuterium atoms), in which energy is released.
general description [ | ]
A thermonuclear explosive device can be built using either liquid deuterium or compressed gas. But the appearance of thermonuclear weapons became possible only thanks to a type of lithium hydride - lithium-6 deuteride. It is a compound of a heavy hydrogen isotope - deuterium and a lithium isotope with a mass number of 6.
Lithium-6 deuteride is a solid that allows you to store deuterium (the normal state of which under normal conditions is a gas) under normal conditions, and, in addition, its second component, lithium-6, is a raw material for obtaining the most scarce hydrogen isotope, tritium. Actually, 6 Li is the only industrial source of tritium production:
3 6 L i + 0 1 n → 1 3 H + 2 4 H e + E 1. (\ displaystyle () _ (3) ^ (6) \ mathrm (Li) + () _ (0) ^ (1) n \ to () _ (1) ^ (3) \ mathrm (H) + () _ (2) ^ (4) \ mathrm (He) + E_ (1).)The same reaction occurs in lithium-6 deuteride in a thermonuclear device under irradiation with fast neutrons; released energy E 1 = 4.784 MeV... The formed tritium (3 H) then reacts with deuterium, releasing energy E 2 = 17.59 MeV:
1 3 H + 1 2 H → 2 4 H e + 0 1 n + E 2, (\ displaystyle () _ (1) ^ (3) \ mathrm (H) + () _ (1) ^ (2) \ mathrm (H) \ to () _ (2) ^ (4) \ mathrm (He) + () _ (0) ^ (1) n + E_ (2),)moreover, a neutron with a kinetic energy of at least 14.1 MeV is formed, which can again initiate the first reaction on another nucleus of lithium-6, or cause the fission of heavy uranium or plutonium nuclei in a shell or trigger with the emission of several more fast neutrons.
Early US thermonuclear munitions also used natural lithium deuteride, which contains mainly a lithium isotope with a mass number of 7. It also serves as a source of tritium, but for this the neutrons participating in the reaction must have an energy of 10 MeV and above: reaction n+ 7 Li → 3 H + 4 He + n- 2.467 MeV is endothermic, energy-absorbing.
A thermonuclear bomb operating on the Teller-Ulam principle consists of two stages: a trigger and a container with thermonuclear fuel.
The device, tested by the United States in 1952, was not actually a bomb, but a laboratory sample, a "3-storey house filled with liquid deuterium," made in a special design. Soviet scientists, on the other hand, developed precisely the bomb - a complete device suitable for practical military use.
The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated is the Soviet 58-megaton "Tsar Bomb", detonated on October 30, 1961 at the Novaya Zemlya archipelago range. Nikita Khrushchev subsequently joked publicly that it was originally supposed to detonate a 100-megaton bomb, but the charge was reduced "so as not to break all the glass in Moscow." Structurally, the bomb was really designed for 100 megatons and this power could be achieved by replacing lead with uranium. The bomb was detonated at an altitude of 4000 meters above the Novaya Zemlya test site. The shock wave after the explosion went around three times Earth... Despite a successful test, the bomb did not enter service; nevertheless, the creation and testing of the superbomb had a great political significance, demonstrating that the USSR has solved the problem of achieving practically any level of megatonnage of the nuclear arsenal.
USA [ | ]
The idea of a nuclear fusion bomb was proposed by Enrico Fermi to his colleague Edward Teller in the fall of 1941, at the very beginning of the Manhattan Project. Teller devoted much of his work during the Manhattan Project to working on the fusion bomb project, somewhat neglecting the atomic bomb itself. His orientation to difficulties and the position of "devil's advocate" in discussions of problems forced Oppenheimer to take Teller and other "problematic" physicists to a siding.
The first important and conceptual steps towards the implementation of the synthesis project were made by Teller's employee Stanislav Ulam. To initiate thermo nuclear fusion Ulam proposed to compress the thermonuclear fuel before starting to heat it, using the factors of the primary fission reaction for this, and also to place the thermonuclear charge separately from the primary nuclear component of the bomb. These proposals made it possible to translate the development of thermonuclear weapons into a practical plane. Based on this, Teller suggested that X-rays and gamma rays generated by the primary explosion could transfer enough energy to the secondary component located in a common shell with the primary one to effect sufficient implosion (squeezing) and initiate a thermonuclear reaction. Teller, his supporters and opponents later discussed Ulam's contributions to the theory behind this mechanism.
Explosion "George"
In 1951, a series of tests was carried out under the general name Operation Greenhouse, during which the issues of miniaturization of nuclear charges with an increase in their power were worked out. One of the tests in this series was an explosion, codenamed "George", in which an experimental device was detonated, which was a nuclear charge in the form of a torus with a small amount of liquid hydrogen placed in the center. The main part of the explosion power was obtained precisely due to hydrogen fusion, which confirmed in practice the general concept of two-stage devices.
"Eevee Mike"
Soon, the development of thermonuclear weapons in the United States was directed towards miniaturizing the Teller-Ulam design, which could be equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine ballistic missiles (SLBMs). By 1960, the W47 megaton-class warheads deployed on submarines equipped with Polaris ballistic missiles were adopted. The warheads had a mass of 320 kg and a diameter of 50 cm. Later tests showed the low reliability of the warheads installed on Polaris missiles, and the need for their modifications. By the mid-1970s, the miniaturization of new versions of warheads according to the Teller-Ulam scheme made it possible to place 10 or more warheads in the dimensions of the warhead of MIRVs.
the USSR [ | ]
North Korea [ | ]
In December, the TsTAK circulated a statement by the head of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un, in which he announced that Pyongyang had its own hydrogen bomb.
On August 12, 1953, at 7.30 am, the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site, which had the service name "Product RDS-6c". This was the fourth Soviet nuclear weapon test.
The beginning of the first work on the thermonuclear program in the USSR dates back to 1945. Then information was received about research conducted in the United States on the thermonuclear problem. They were initiated by the American physicist Edward Teller in 1942. The Teller concept of thermonuclear weapons was taken as a basis, which was called a "pipe" in the circles of Soviet nuclear scientists - a cylindrical container with liquid deuterium, which was supposed to be heated by the explosion of an initiating device such as a conventional atomic bomb. It was only in 1950 that the Americans established that the "pipe" was futile, and they continued to develop other designs. But by this time, Soviet physicists had already independently developed another concept of thermonuclear weapons, which soon - in 1953 - led to success.
An alternative hydrogen bomb scheme was invented by Andrei Sakharov. The bomb was based on the idea of "puff" and the use of lithium-6 deuteride. Developed in KB-11 (today it is the city of Sarov, formerly Arzamas-16, Nizhny Novgorod Region) thermonuclear charge RDS-6s was a spherical system of layers of uranium and thermonuclear fuel, surrounded by a chemical explosive.
To increase the energy release of the charge, tritium was used in its design. The main task in the creation of such a weapon was to heat and ignite heavy hydrogen - deuterium with the help of the energy released during the explosion of an atomic bomb, to carry out thermonuclear reactions with the release of energy, capable of supporting themselves. To increase the fraction of "burnt" deuterium, Sakharov proposed to surround deuterium with a shell of ordinary natural uranium, which was supposed to slow down the expansion and, most importantly, significantly increase the density of deuterium. The phenomenon of ionization compression of thermonuclear fuel, which became the basis of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, is still called "saccharification".
According to the results of work on the first hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and laureate of the Stalin Prize.
"Product RDS-6s" was made in the form of a transportable bomb weighing 7 tons, which was placed in the bomb hatch of the Tu-16 bomber. For comparison, the bomb, created by the Americans, weighed 54 tons and was the size of a three-story building.
To assess the destructive effects of the new bomb, a city of industrial and administrative buildings was built at the Semipalatinsk test site. In total, there were 190 different structures on the field. In this test, vacuum intakes for radiochemical samples were used for the first time, which automatically opened under the action of a shock wave. A total of 500 different measuring, recording and filming devices installed in underground casemates and solid ground structures were prepared for testing the RDS-6s. Aviation technical support of tests - measurement of the shock wave pressure on the aircraft in the air at the moment of the explosion of the product, air sampling from the radioactive cloud, aerial photography of the area was carried out by a special flight unit. The bomb was detonated remotely, by giving a signal from the remote control, which was in the bunker.
It was decided to make an explosion on a steel tower 40 meters high, the charge was located at a height of 30 meters. The radioactive soil from past tests was removed to a safe distance, special structures were rebuilt in their own places on the old foundations, a bunker was built 5 meters from the tower to install the equipment developed at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, recording thermonuclear processes.
Installed on the field military equipment of all types of troops. During the tests, all experimental structures within a radius of up to four kilometers were destroyed. A hydrogen bomb explosion could completely destroy a city 8 kilometers across. The environmental consequences of the explosion were dire, with the first explosion accounting for 82% strontium-90 and 75% cesium-137.
The power of the bomb reached 400 kilotons, 20 times more than the first atomic bombs in the USA and the USSR.
The work on the creation of the hydrogen bomb was the world's first intellectual "battle of the minds" of a truly global scale. The creation of the hydrogen bomb initiated the emergence of completely new scientific directions - physics of high-temperature plasma, physics of ultra-high energy densities, physics of anomalous pressures. For the first time in the history of mankind, mathematical modeling was used on a large scale.
Work on the "RDS-6s product" created a scientific and technical groundwork, which was then used in the development of an incomparably more advanced hydrogen bomb of a fundamentally new type - a two-stage hydrogen bomb.
The Sakharov's hydrogen bomb not only became a serious counterargument in the political confrontation between the United States and the USSR, but also served as the reason for the rapid development of Soviet cosmonautics in those years. It was after successful nuclear tests OKB Korolev received an important government task to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile to deliver the created charge to the target. Subsequently, the rocket, called the "seven", launched the first artificial satellite of the Earth into space, and it was on it that the first cosmonaut of the planet, Yuri Gagarin, started.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
For many of our readers, the hydrogen bomb is associated with an atomic bomb, only much more powerful. In fact, this is a fundamentally new weapon that required immeasurably great intellectual efforts for its creation and works on fundamentally different physical principles.
"Puff"
Modern bomb
The only thing in common between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb is that both release the colossal energy hidden in the atomic nucleus. This can be done in two ways: divide heavy nuclei, for example, uranium or plutonium, into lighter ones (fission reaction), or force the lightest hydrogen isotopes to merge (fusion reaction). As a result of both reactions, the mass of the resulting material is always less than the mass of the original atoms. But mass cannot disappear without a trace - it turns into energy according to the famous Einstein formula E = mc2.
A-bomb
To create an atomic bomb, a necessary and sufficient condition is to obtain a sufficient amount of fissile material. The work is quite laborious, but low-intellectual, lying closer to the mining industry than to high science. The main resources for the creation of such weapons go to the construction of giant uranium mines and enrichment plants. Evidence of the simplicity of the device is the fact that not even a month had passed between the receipt of the plutonium necessary for the first bomb and the first Soviet nuclear explosion.
Let us briefly recall the principle of operation of such a bomb, known from the course of school physics. It is based on the property of uranium and some transuranic elements, such as plutonium, to emit more than one neutron during decay. These elements can decay both spontaneously and under the influence of other neutrons.
The released neutron can leave the radioactive material, or it can collide with another atom, causing the next fission reaction. When a certain concentration of a substance (critical mass) is exceeded, the number of newborn neutrons, causing further fission of the atomic nucleus, begins to exceed the number of decaying nuclei. The number of decaying atoms begins to grow like an avalanche, giving rise to new neutrons, that is, a chain reaction occurs. For uranium-235, the critical mass is about 50 kg, for plutonium-239 - 5.6 kg. That is, a ball of plutonium weighing a little less than 5.6 kg is just a warm piece of metal, and with a mass of a little more, there are only a few nanoseconds.
The actual operation of the bomb is simple: we take two hemispheres of uranium or plutonium, each slightly less than the critical mass, place them at a distance of 45 cm, surround them with explosives and detonate. Uranium or plutonium is sintered into a piece of supercritical mass, and a nuclear reaction begins. Everything. There is another way to start a nuclear reaction - to squeeze a piece of plutonium with a powerful explosion: the distance between the atoms will decrease, and the reaction will start at a lower critical mass. All modern atomic detonators work on this principle.
The problems of the atomic bomb begin from the moment when we want to increase the power of the explosion. A simple increase in fissile material cannot be dispensed with - as soon as its mass reaches a critical one, it detonates. Various ingenious schemes were invented, for example, to make a bomb not from two parts, but from many, which made the bomb resemble a gutted orange, and then collect it in one piece with one explosion, but still, with a power of over 100 kilotons, the problems became insurmountable.
H-bomb
But the fuel for thermonuclear fusion does not have a critical mass. Here the Sun, filled with thermonuclear fuel, hangs overhead, inside it for billions of years a thermonuclear reaction has been going on, and nothing explodes. In addition, during the fusion reaction, for example, of deuterium and tritium (heavy and superheavy isotope of hydrogen), 4.2 times more energy is released than when the same mass of uranium-235 is burned.
Making the atomic bomb was more an experimental than a theoretical process. The creation of the hydrogen bomb required the emergence of completely new physical disciplines: the physics of high-temperature plasma and ultrahigh pressures. Before starting to design a bomb, it was necessary to thoroughly understand the nature of the phenomena that occur only in the core of stars. No experiments could help here - only theoretical physics and higher mathematics were the tools of the researchers. It is no coincidence that a gigantic role in the development of thermonuclear weapons belongs to mathematicians: Ulam, Tikhonov, Samarsky, etc.
Classic super
By the end of 1945, Edward Teller proposed the first hydrogen bomb design, dubbed the "classic super". To create the monstrous pressure and temperature required to start the fusion reaction, it was supposed to use an ordinary atomic bomb. The "classic super" itself was a long cylinder filled with deuterium. An intermediate "ignition" chamber with a deuterium-tritium mixture was also envisaged - the reaction of the synthesis of deuterium and tritium begins at a lower pressure. By analogy with a fire, deuterium was supposed to play the role of firewood, a mixture of deuterium with tritium - a glass of gasoline, and an atomic bomb - matches. This scheme is called "pipe" - a kind of cigar with an atomic lighter at one end. According to the same scheme, Soviet physicists began to develop a hydrogen bomb.
However, the mathematician Stanislav Ulam proved to Teller on an ordinary slide rule that the synthesis of pure deuterium in the "super" was hardly possible, and the mixture would require such an amount of tritium that for its production it would be necessary to practically freeze the production of weapons-grade plutonium in the United States.
Sugar puff
In mid-1946, Teller proposed another scheme for a hydrogen bomb - the "alarm clock". It consisted of alternating spherical layers of uranium, deuterium and tritium. During a nuclear explosion of the central charge of plutonium, the necessary pressure and temperature were created for the start of a thermonuclear reaction in other layers of the bomb. However, the “alarm clock” required an atomic initiator of high power, and the United States (as well as the USSR) experienced problems with the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.
In the fall of 1948, Andrei Sakharov came to a similar scheme. In the Soviet Union, the structure was called "puff". For the USSR, which did not have time to produce weapons-grade uranium-235 and plutonium-239 in sufficient quantities, Sakharov's puff was a panacea. And that's why.
In an ordinary atomic bomb, natural uranium-238 is not only useless (the energy of neutrons during decay is not enough to initiate fission), but also harmful, since it greedily absorbs secondary neutrons, slowing down chain reaction... Therefore, weapons-grade uranium is 90% composed of the isotope uranium-235. However, the neutrons resulting from thermonuclear fusion are 10 times more energetic than fission neutrons, and natural uranium-238, irradiated with such neutrons, begins to fission excellently. The new bomb made it possible to use uranium-238 as an explosive, which was previously considered as production waste.
The highlight of Sakharov's "puff" was also the use of white lung instead of acutely deficient tritium crystalline substance- lithium deutride 6LiD.
As mentioned above, a mixture of deuterium and tritium is ignited much more easily than pure deuterium. However, this is where the advantages of tritium end, but only disadvantages remain: in the normal state tritium is a gas, which causes difficulties with storage; tritium is radioactive and, decaying, turns into stable helium-3, actively devouring much-needed fast neutrons, which limits the bomb's shelf life to a few months.
Non-radioactive lithium deuteride, when irradiated with slow fission neutrons - the consequences of the explosion of an atomic fuse - turns into tritium. Thus, the radiation of the primary atomic explosion in an instant produces a sufficient amount of tritium for a further thermonuclear reaction, and deuterium is present in lithium deuteride initially.
It was such a bomb, RDS-6s, that was successfully tested on August 12, 1953 at the tower of the Semipalatinsk test site. The power of the explosion was 400 kilotons, and there is still debate about whether it was real thermonuclear explosion or super powerful atomic. Indeed, the reaction of thermonuclear fusion in the Sakharovskaya puff accounted for no more than 20% of the total charge power. The main contribution to the explosion was made by the decay reaction of uranium-238 irradiated with fast neutrons, thanks to which RDS-6s opened the era of the so-called "dirty" bombs.
The fact is that the main radioactive contamination comes from the decay products (in particular, strontium-90 and cesium-137). In essence, Sakharov's "puff" was a gigantic atomic bomb, only slightly enhanced by a thermonuclear reaction. It is no coincidence that just one explosion of the "puff" gave 82% strontium-90 and 75% cesium-137, which got into the atmosphere over the entire history of the Semipalatinsk test site.
American bombs
Nevertheless, it was the Americans who detonated the first hydrogen bomb. November 1, 1952 at Elugelab Atoll in Pacific a 10 megaton fusion device "Mike" was successfully tested. A 74-ton American device can hardly be called a bomb. The Mike was a bulky device the size of two-storey house filled with liquid deuterium at a temperature close to absolute zero (Sakharov's "puff" was quite a transportable product). However, the highlight of the "Mike" was not the size, but the ingenious principle of squeezing thermonuclear explosives.
Recall that the main idea of a hydrogen bomb is to create conditions for fusion (ultra-high pressure and temperature) through a nuclear explosion. In the "puff" scheme, the nuclear charge is located in the center, and therefore it not so much compresses deuterium as scatters it outward - an increase in the amount of thermonuclear explosives does not lead to an increase in power - it simply does not have time to detonate. This is what limits the maximum power of this scheme - the world's most powerful "puff" Orange Herald, blown up by the British on May 31, 1957, gave only 720 kilotons.
Ideally, it would be to make an atomic fuse explode inward, compressing thermonuclear explosives. But how to do that? Edward Teller put forward a brilliant idea: to compress a thermonuclear fuel not by mechanical energy and a neutron flux, but by the radiation of the primary atomic fuse.
In Teller's new design, the initiating atomic unit was separated from the thermonuclear unit. When an atomic charge was triggered, X-rays were ahead of the shock wave and propagated along the walls of the cylindrical body, evaporating and transforming the polyethylene inner lining of the bomb body into plasma. The plasma, in turn, re-emitted softer X-rays, which were absorbed by the outer layers of the inner cylinder made of uranium-238 - the "pusher". The layers began to evaporate explosively (this phenomenon is called ablation). An incandescent uranium plasma can be compared to jets of a super-powerful rocket engine, the thrust of which is directed into the cylinder with deuterium. The uranium cylinder collapsed, the pressure and temperature of deuterium reached critical levels. The same pressure compressed the central plutonium tube to a critical mass, and it detonated. The explosion of the plutonium fuse pressed on the deuterium from the inside, additionally compressing and heating the thermonuclear explosive, which detonated. An intense flux of neutrons splits uranium-238 nuclei in the "pusher", causing a secondary decay reaction. All this had time to happen until the moment when blast wave from the initial nuclear explosion, it reached the thermonuclear block. The calculation of all these events occurring in billionths of a second, and demanded the mind of the strongest mathematicians of the planet. The creators of "Mike" experienced not horror from the 10-megaton explosion, but indescribable delight - they managed not only to understand the processes that real world go only in the cores of stars, but also experimentally test their theories by arranging their own small star on Earth.
Bravo
Having bypassed the Russians in the beauty of the design, the Americans could not make their device compact: they used liquid supercooled deuterium instead of powdered lithium deutride from Sakharov. In Los Alamos, they reacted to Sakharov's “puff” with a grain of envy: “instead of a huge cow with a bucket raw milk Russians use a carton of powdered milk. " However, both sides failed to hide secrets from each other. On March 1, 1954, the Americans tested a 15-megaton Bravo bomb on lithium deutride near Bikini Atoll, and on November 22, 1955, the first Soviet two-stage thermonuclear bomb RDS-37 with a capacity of 1.7 megatons exploded over the Semipalatinsk test site, demolishing almost half a polygon. Since then, the design has been nuclear bomb underwent minor changes (for example, a uranium shield appeared between the initiating bomb and the main charge) and became canonical. And in the world there are no more such large-scale mysteries of nature, which could be solved by such a spectacular experiment. Is that the birth of a supernova.
H-BOMB
a weapon of great destructive power (of the order of megatons in TNT equivalent), the principle of operation of which is based on the reaction of thermonuclear fusion of light nuclei. The source of the explosion energy are processes similar to the processes taking place in the Sun and other stars.
Thermonuclear reactions. The interior of the Sun contains a huge amount of hydrogen, which is in a state of ultra-high compression at a temperature of approx. 15,000,000 K. At such a high temperature and plasma density, hydrogen nuclei experience constant collisions with each other, some of which ends with their fusion and, ultimately, the formation of heavier helium nuclei. Such reactions, called thermonuclear fusion, are accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy. According to the laws of physics, the energy release during thermonuclear fusion is due to the fact that when a heavier nucleus is formed, part of the mass of the light nuclei included in its composition is converted into a colossal amount of energy. That is why the Sun, possessing a gigantic mass, in the process of thermonuclear fusion loses approx. 100 billion tons of matter and releases energy, thanks to which life on Earth became possible.
Isotopes of hydrogen. The hydrogen atom is the simplest of all atoms in existence. It consists of one proton, which is its nucleus, around which a single electron revolves. Thorough studies of water (H2O) have shown that it contains trace amounts of "heavy" water containing the "heavy isotope" of hydrogen - deuterium (2H). The deuterium nucleus consists of a proton and a neutron - a neutral particle with a mass close to a proton. There is a third hydrogen isotope, tritium, which contains one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus. Tritium is unstable and undergoes spontaneous radioactive decay, turning into an isotope of helium. Traces of tritium are found in the Earth's atmosphere, where it is formed as a result of the interaction of cosmic rays with gas molecules that make up the air. Tritium is produced artificially in a nuclear reactor by irradiating the isotope of lithium-6 with a neutron flux.
Development of a hydrogen bomb. Preliminary theoretical analysis showed that thermonuclear fusion is easiest to carry out in a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Taking this as a basis, US scientists in the early 1950s, the hydrogen bomb (HB) project was launched. The first tests of a model nuclear device were carried out at the Eniwetok test site in the spring of 1951; thermonuclear fusion was only partial. Significant success was achieved on November 1, 1951 when testing a massive nuclear device, the explosion power of which was 4e8 Mt in TNT equivalent. The first hydrogen aerial bomb was detonated in the USSR on August 12, 1953, and on March 1, 1954, the Americans detonated a more powerful (about 15 Mt) aerial bomb on Bikini Atoll. Since then, both powers have detonated advanced megaton weapons. The explosion at Bikini Atoll was accompanied by the release of large quantities of radioactive substances. Some of them fell hundreds of kilometers from the site of the explosion on the Japanese fishing boat "Happy Dragon", and the other covered the island of Rongelap. Since stable helium is formed as a result of thermonuclear fusion, the radioactivity in the explosion of a purely hydrogen bomb should be no more than that of an atomic detonator of a thermonuclear reaction. However, in the case under consideration, the predicted and real radioactive fallout significantly differed in quantity and composition.
The mechanism of action of a hydrogen bomb. The sequence of processes occurring during the explosion of a hydrogen bomb can be represented as follows. First, the charge-initiator of a thermonuclear reaction (a small atomic bomb) inside the HB shell explodes, as a result of which a neutron flash occurs and a high temperature is created, which is necessary for the initiation of thermonuclear fusion. Neutrons bombard a lithium deuteride insert - a compound of deuterium with lithium (a lithium isotope with a mass number of 6 is used). Lithium-6 splits into helium and tritium under the action of neutrons. Thus, the atomic fuse creates the materials necessary for the synthesis directly in the bomb itself. Then a thermonuclear reaction begins in a mixture of deuterium and tritium, the temperature inside the bomb rises rapidly, involving more and more large quantity hydrogen. With a further increase in temperature, a reaction between deuterium nuclei, characteristic of a purely hydrogen bomb, could begin. All reactions, of course, are so fast that they are perceived as instantaneous.
Division, synthesis, division (superbomb). In fact, in a bomb, the sequence of processes described above ends at the stage of the reaction of deuterium with tritium. Further, the bomb designers preferred to use nuclear fission rather than nuclear fusion. As a result of the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei, helium and fast neutrons are formed, the energy of which is large enough to cause the fission of uranium-238 (the main isotope of uranium, much cheaper than uranium-235 used in conventional atomic bombs). Fast neutrons split the atoms of the uranium shell of the superbomb. Fission of one ton of uranium creates energy equivalent to 18 Mt. Energy goes not only to the explosion and the release of heat. Each uranium nucleus splits into two highly radioactive "fragments". The fission products include 36 different chemical elements and nearly 200 radioactive isotopes. All this constitutes the radioactive fallout accompanying the explosions of superbombs. Thanks to the unique design and the described mechanism of action, weapons of this type can be made as powerful as desired. It is much cheaper than atomic bombs of the same power.
The consequences of the explosion. Shockwave and thermal effect. The direct (primary) effect of a superbomb explosion is threefold. The most obvious of the direct impacts is a shockwave of tremendous intensity. The strength of its impact, depending on the power of the bomb, the height of the explosion above the earth's surface and the nature of the terrain, decreases with distance from the epicenter of the explosion. The thermal effect of an explosion is determined by the same factors, but, in addition, depends on the transparency of the air - the fog dramatically reduces the distance at which a thermal flash can cause serious burns. According to calculations, when a 20-megaton bomb explodes in the atmosphere, people will remain alive in 50% of cases if they 1) hide in an underground reinforced concrete shelter at a distance of about 8 km from the epicenter of the explosion (EE), 2) are in ordinary city buildings at a distance of approx ... 15 km from EV, 3) were in an open place at a distance of approx. 20 km from EV. In conditions of poor visibility and at a distance of at least 25 km, if the atmosphere is clear, for people in open areas, the probability of surviving increases rapidly with distance from the epicenter; at a distance of 32 km calculated value is more than 90%. The area over which the penetrating radiation that occurs during the explosion causes death is relatively small, even in the case of a high-yield superbomb.
Fire ball. Depending on the composition and mass of the combustible material involved in the fireball, giant self-sustaining fire hurricanes can form, raging for many hours. However, the most dangerous (albeit secondary) consequence of the explosion is radioactive contamination of the environment.
Fallout. How they are formed.
When the bomb explodes, the resulting fireball is filled with a huge amount of radioactive particles. Usually, these particles are so small that, once in the upper atmosphere, they can remain there for a long time. But if the fireball touches the surface of the Earth, everything that is on it turns into red-hot dust and ash and draws them into fire tornado... In a vortex of flame, they mix and bind with radioactive particles. Radioactive dust, except for the largest, does not settle immediately. The finer dust is carried away by the resulting explosion cloud and gradually falls out as it moves in the wind. Directly at the site of the explosion, radioactive fallout can be extremely intense - mainly coarse dust settling on the ground. Hundreds of kilometers from the explosion site and at greater distances, small, but still visible to the eye ash particles. Often they form a cover similar to fallen snow, deadly to anyone who happens to be nearby. Even smaller and more invisible particles, before they settle on the earth, can wander in the atmosphere for months or even years, going around the globe many times. By the time they fall out, their radioactivity is significantly weakened. The most dangerous is the radiation of strontium-90 with a half-life of 28 years. Its fallout is clearly seen throughout the world. By settling on foliage and grass, it enters the food chain, including humans. As a result, noticeable, although not yet dangerous, amounts of strontium-90 were found in the bones of the inhabitants of most countries. Accumulation of strontium-90 in human bones in long term very dangerous, as it leads to the formation of bone malignant tumors.
Long-term contamination of the area with radioactive fallout. In the event of hostilities, the use of a hydrogen bomb will lead to immediate radioactive contamination of an area within a radius of approx. 100 km from the epicenter of the explosion. When a superbomb explodes, an area of tens of thousands of square kilometers will be contaminated. Such a huge area of destruction with a single bomb makes it a completely new type of weapon. Even if the super bomb does not hit the target, i.e. will not hit the object with shock-thermal effects, penetrating radiation and the radioactive fallout accompanying the explosion will make the surrounding space unsuitable for habitation. Such precipitation can last for days, weeks or even months. Depending on their quantity, the intensity of the radiation can reach lethal levels. A relatively small number of super bombs are enough to completely cover large country a layer of radioactive dust that is deadly to all living things. Thus, the creation of the superbomb marked the beginning of an era when it became possible to make entire continents uninhabitable. Even after a long time after the cessation of the direct impact of radioactive fallout, the danger will remain due to the high radiotoxicity of isotopes such as strontium-90. With food products grown on soils contaminated with this isotope, radioactivity will enter the human body.
see also
NUCLEAR SYNTHESIS;
NUCLEAR WEAPON ;
WAR NUCLEAR.
LITERATURE
The action of nuclear weapons. M., 1960 Nuclear explosion in space, on earth and underground. M., 1970
Collier's Encyclopedia. - Open Society. 2000 .
See what a "HYDROGEN BOMB" is in other dictionaries:
An outdated name for a nuclear bomb of great destructive power, the action of which is based on the use of energy released during the reaction of fusion of light nuclei (see. Thermonuclear reactions). For the first time a hydrogen bomb was tested in the USSR (1953) ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Thermonuclear weapon type of weapon mass destruction, the destructive power of which is based on the use of the energy of the nuclear fusion reaction of light elements into heavier ones (for example, the fusion of two nuclei of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) atoms into one ... ... Wikipedia
A nuclear bomb of great destructive power, the action of which is based on the use of energy released during the reaction of fusion of light nuclei (see Thermonuclear reactions). The first thermonuclear charge (with a capacity of 3 Mt) was detonated on November 1, 1952 in the USA. ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
H-bomb- vandenilinė bomba statusas T sritis chemija apibrėžtis Termobranduolinė bomba, kurios užtaisas - deuteris ir tritis. atitikmenys: angl. H bomb; hydrogen bomb rus. hydrogen bomb ryšiai: sinonimas - H bomba ... Chemijos terminų aiškinamasis žodynas
H-bomb- vandenilinė bomba statusas T sritis fizika atitikmenys: angl. hydrogen bomb vok. Wasserstoffbombe, f rus. hydrogen bomb, f pranc. bombe à hydrogène, f ... Fizikos terminų žodynas
H-bomb- vandenilinė bomba statusas T sritis ekologija ir aplinkotyra apibrėžtis Bomba, kurios branduolinis užtaisas - vandenilio izotopai: deuteris ir tritis. atitikmenys: angl. H bomb; hydrogen bomb vok. Wasserstoffbombe, f rus. hydrogen bomb, f ... Ekologijos terminų aiškinamasis žodynas
An explosive bomb of great destructive power. V.'s action. based on thermonuclear reaction. See Nuclear Weapons ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
On August 12, 1953, the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site.
And on January 16, 1963, in the midst of cold war, Nikita Khrushchev told the world that Soviet Union possesses in its arsenal new weapons of mass destruction. A year and a half before that, the most powerful explosion hydrogen bomb in the world - a charge with a capacity of over 50 megatons was detonated on Novaya Zemlya. In many ways, it was this statement of the Soviet leader that made the world realize the threat of further escalation of the race. nuclear weapons: already on August 5, 1963, an agreement was signed in Moscow on the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water.
History of creation
The theoretical possibility of obtaining energy by thermonuclear fusion was known even before World War II, but it was the war and the subsequent arms race that raised the question of creating a technical device for the practical creation of this reaction. It is known that in Germany in 1944, work was carried out to initiate thermonuclear fusion by compression nuclear fuel using charges of a conventional explosive - but they were not crowned with success, since it was not possible to obtain the required temperatures and pressures. The USA and the USSR have been developing thermonuclear weapons since the 40s, practically simultaneously testing the first thermonuclear devices in the early 50s. In 1952, on Enewetak Atoll, the United States exploded a charge with a capacity of 10.4 megatons (which is 450 times more than the power of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki), and in 1953 a device with a capacity of 400 kilotons was tested in the USSR.The designs of the first thermonuclear devices were ill-suited for real combat use... For example, the device tested by the United States in 1952 was a ground structure as high as a two-story building and weighing over 80 tons. Liquid thermonuclear fuel was stored in it with the help of a huge refrigeration unit... Therefore, in the future mass production thermonuclear weapons were carried out using solid fuel - lithium-6 deuteride. In 1954, the United States tested a device based on it on the Bikini Atoll, and in 1955, a new Soviet thermonuclear bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. In 1957, a hydrogen bomb was tested in Great Britain. In October 1961, a 58 megaton thermonuclear bomb was detonated in the USSR on Novaya Zemlya - the most powerful bomb ever tested by mankind, which went down in history as the Tsar Bomba.
Further development was aimed at reducing the size of the structure of hydrogen bombs in order to ensure their delivery to the target by ballistic missiles. Already in the 60s, the mass of the devices was reduced to several hundred kilograms, and by the 70s, ballistic missiles could carry more than 10 warheads at the same time - these are missiles with multiple warheads, each of the parts can hit its own target. To date, the United States, Russia and Great Britain have a thermonuclear arsenal; tests of thermonuclear charges were also carried out in China (in 1967) and in France (in 1968).
How the hydrogen bomb works
The action of a hydrogen bomb is based on the use of energy released during the reaction of thermonuclear fusion of light nuclei. It is this reaction that takes place in the interiors of stars, where, under the action of ultra-high temperatures and gigantic pressure, hydrogen nuclei collide and merge into heavier helium nuclei. During the reaction, part of the mass of hydrogen nuclei is converted into a large number of energy - thanks to this, the stars and emit a huge amount of energy constantly. Scientists copied this reaction using hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium, which gave the name "hydrogen bomb". Initially, liquid hydrogen isotopes were used to produce charges, and later lithium-6 deuteride, a solid, a compound of deuterium and a lithium isotope, began to be used.
Lithium-6 deuteride is the main component of the hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear fuel. It already stores deuterium, and the lithium isotope serves as a raw material for the formation of tritium. To start a thermonuclear fusion reaction, you need to create high temperature and pressure, as well as isolate tritium from lithium-6. These conditions are provided as follows.
The shell of a container for a thermonuclear fuel is made of uranium-238 and plastic, a conventional nuclear charge with a capacity of several kilotons is placed next to the container - it is called a trigger, or a charge-initiator of a hydrogen bomb. During the explosion of a plutonium initiator charge under the influence of a powerful x-ray the container shell turns into plasma, shrinking thousands of times, which creates the necessary high pressure and an enormous temperature. Simultaneously, neutrons emitted by plutonium interact with lithium-6 to form tritium. Deuterium and tritium nuclei interact under the influence of ultrahigh temperature and pressure, which leads to a thermonuclear explosion.
If you make several layers of uranium-238 and lithium-6 deuteride, then each of them will add its own power to the explosion of the bomb - that is, such a "puff" allows you to increase the power of the explosion almost indefinitely. Thanks to this, a hydrogen bomb can be made of almost any power, and it will be much cheaper than a conventional nuclear bomb of the same power.
Search
We can notify you about new articles,