WMD Picutres

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

Very cool pictures
http://www.photographyserved.com/Gallery/Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction/56260

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Say, why were gadget, littleboy and fatman so different from each other?  They were built more or less side by side, at the same time, by the same people.  Why didn't they turn out more similar? 

[DJJ]

The test bomb and Fat Man were similar in design. If I understand correctly, they had a sphere of plutonium surrounded by a shell of high explosive. Setting the explosive off compressed the sphere enough to make it mad. Put fins on the test bomb and you've got Fat Man. Little boy had two chunks of plutonium, the bigger one fixed in place with a cone-shaped depression on one side; the other was cone-shaped and was fired down a barrel to slam into the hole in the bigger chunk, hence the longer, skinnier shape. What surprises me is that they chose to drop the untested design first.

[Physics]

They were different designs.  Fat Man and Trinity were both Plutonium devices, and thus had a core of plutonium surrounded by high explosives.  Little Boy was a uranium bomb, where 2 halves of a critical mass are held a distance apart, and then slammed together for detonation.  According to wikipedia, Fat Man was a design adapted from Trinity. 


Fat Man

Little Boy

[DJJ]

Hey, I was close.

[drewtam]

Say, why were gadget, littleboy and fatman so different from each other?  They were built more or less side by side, at the same time, by the same people.  Why didn't they turn out more similar? 

They were trying different design architectures. Little boy uses the shotgun charge, it uses explosive to shoot a chunk of fissile material into the core, plugging the hole, making it a solid piece. Fat man uses a more advanced explosive control, it uses a shell of explosive perfectly balanced to around a shell of fissile. The explosive implodes the fissile into a solid ball. This is much more efficient and gives higher yield. But it is also much more difficult to get the perfectly balanced ignition switching and mass distribution right for it to work.

[drewtam]

Wow, you guys are fast on the draw.

[DJJ]

Just good timing. I had just logged on. Plus it helps to just go off half-cocked without doing any research. 

[Tuco]

....Plus it helps to just go off half-cocked without doing any research. 

No guts, no glory.

[Nick1911]

Here's a question for the guru's:  Wasn't there a "Clean" H bomb developed that used conventional explosives to compress a lead sphere that compressed Deuterium and Tritium in the core?

I seem to recall hearing that somewhere, but have no idea how true or accurate it is.  May be a propaganda piece from the cold war.

[AJ Dual]

Here's a question for the guru's:  Wasn't there a "Clean" H bomb developed that used conventional explosives to compress a lead sphere that compressed Deuterium and Tritium in the core?

I seem to recall hearing that somewhere, but have no idea how true or accurate it is.  May be a propaganda piece from the cold war.

AFAIK, all H bombs had a "conventional" fission trigger bomb, and tritium and Lithium Deturide is/was packed in/around that in various configurations to get the fusion secondary.

Chemical explosions alone won't create the needed pressure and temperature to strip off the electrons from the Fusion fuel's atoms and get them to squash together.

You might be able to get a small amount of tritium to fuse with a compressive chemical explosive, similar to the way laser inertial confinement blasts a tritium "BB" to make a fusion pulse, but what you'd get (In fusion output) would be a laboratory curiosity only. The ICF laser test fusion devices would have to fire like machine-guns over and over to make a useful power plant.

[Physics]

Here's a question for the guru's:  Wasn't there a "Clean" H bomb developed that used conventional explosives to compress a lead sphere that compressed Deuterium and Tritium in the core?

I seem to recall hearing that somewhere, but have no idea how true or accurate it is.  May be a propaganda piece from the cold war.

That I don't know.  The only devices I know about are what AJ described. 

[Brad Johnson]

Conventional explosives don't deliver the energy needing to initiate a fusion reaction in the core. Conventional explosives initiate the fission reaction which, in turn, supplied the energy to the secondary.

You can get a darn good layman's description of fusion and boosted fission devices in Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears.

Brad

[Physics]

Conventional explosives don't deliver the energy needing to initiate a fusion reaction in the core. Conventional explosives initiate the fission reaction which, in turn, supplied the energy to the secondary.

You can get a darn good layman's description of fusion and boosted fission devices in Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears.

Brad

That was my intro.

[Lbys]

I might be recalling incorrectly, but I read "Dark Sun" last summer, and I don't think that true fusion devices are deployed.  Edward Teller was really devoted to developing a true fusion device (whereby nuclei of D2 or T2 are fused into He + Energy), and I think he succeeded with the "Ivy Mike" device, but it weighed something like 20 tons and had an associated cryogenic plant to go along with it.

If I understand correctly, thermonuclear devices are really just intensified fission bombs.  Primary fission sets off secondary low-efficiency fusion which in turn produces a crap-ton of neutrons that greatly increase the efficiency of any remaining fission reactions.

Thoughts?  I'm guessing the guy with the gnarly equations might be able to correct me.

[AJ Dual]

I might be recalling incorrectly, but I read "Dark Sun" last summer, and I don't think that true fusion devices are deployed.  Edward Teller was really devoted to developing a true fusion device (whereby nuclei of D2 or T2 are fused into He + Energy), and I think he succeeded with the "Ivy Mike" device, but it weighed something like 20 tons and had an associated cryogenic plant to go along with it.

If I understand correctly, thermonuclear devices are really just intensified fission bombs.  Primary fission sets off secondary low-efficiency fusion which in turn produces a crap-ton of neutrons that greatly increase the efficiency of any remaining fission reactions.

Thoughts?  I'm guessing the guy with the gnarly equations might be able to correct me.

Yep,

The majority of "H-bombs" are just "fusion enhanced" where you get more efficient fission of the heavy metals. The contribution to the actual energy yield of the fusion is negligible. It is indeed the extra neutrons to get more heavy metal nuclei to split before the energy release from the fission spreads it away and you lose efficiency.

I believe there were some two stage devices that were weaponized and deliverable, but the advent of the ICBM, especially the MIRV and improvments in targeting ended that.

The overkill was because of targeting uncertainty and delivery uncertainty. (bombers getting shot down) Missiles ended that.

[Boomhauer]

Those are some great pics at the link...

I've got the B-1 as my desktop wallpaper now...