![]() Detonating the primary compresses the secondary, causing the “sparkplug” to undergo fission. The secondary generally consists of dry fusion fuel, often lithium deuteride, and a “sparkplug”, a sub-critical mass of fissile material. ![]() The first stage or “primary” consists of a fission device that, when detonated, provides the necessary energy in the form of X-ray radiation to trigger a fusion reaction in the second stage. While crude fission weapons obliterated two small Japanese cities, megaton-class thermonuclear weapons are comfortably capable of wreaking much more destruction, causing nuclear burns many miles from the blast site.Īlthough precise technical details remain highly classified, the basic two-stage thermonuclear weapon design was laid down by Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam in the early 1950s. Yet Ivy King paled in comparison to Castle Bravo, the largest hydrogen bomb tested by the US, with a yield of 15 megatons. This bomb was 25 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The explosive power of thermonuclear devices dwarfs that of fission devices: the most powerful pure-fission device tested by the United States was Ivy King, a 500 kiloton weapon. Thermonuclear weapons differ from atom bombs in that most of their explosive power comes from nuclear fusion, the binding together of light atomic nuclei, as opposed to fission or splitting atoms. United States Department of Energy A totally different type of nuclear bombĪfter the Soviet Union also developed fission devices in the late 1940s, the US began to work on new technology known as thermonuclear weapons or hydrogen bombs. When detonated, this core is compressed using conventional high explosives into a critical mass capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction. The core of a fission weapon is composed of weapons-grade fissile material such as highly enriched uranium or plutonium, which on its own is not explosive. These type of weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of people. First developed during World War II through the US-led Manhattan Project, fission devices (commonly known as atom bombs) create an explosion by splitting the nuclei of heavy atoms. There are two basic types of nuclear weapons: fission weapons and fusion weapons. While details of the test will remain unclear for some time, the term “hydrogen bomb” is also somewhat ambiguous, leaving further room for speculation about the true nature of North Korea’s nuclear technology. Moving to a new form of nuclear weapons technology will likely have significant implications for North Korea, although some experts have expressed scepticism about these claims and there are clear benefits for Pyongyang to exaggerate its nuclear capabilities. Following the test, North Korean state television lauded the first detonation of a “hydrogen bomb” as a “ national epoch-making event”. North Korean officials announced in advance that the test would involve “ a totally different type of nuclear bomb” from those trialled in previous years. Supernovae and the formation of planetary nebulas together play a major role in the dispersal of chemical elements into space.Įventually, much of the material lost by stars is pulled together through the gravitational force, and it condenses into a new generation of stars and accompanying planets.Reports that North Korea has launched a fourth nuclear weapons test – backed by convincing seismic data – have caused widespread alarm. These elements, along with much of the star, are ejected into space by the explosion. During this event, the flood of energetic neutrons reacts with iron and the other nuclei to produce elements heavier than iron. The luminosity of the star can increase temporarily to nearly that of an entire galaxy. Expanding shock waves generated within the star due to the collapse cause the star to quickly explode. This process heats the core to a temperature on the order of \(5 \times 10^9K\). Lacking an outward pressure from fusion reactions, the star begins to contract due to gravity. ![]() Hence, nuclear energy cannot be generated in an iron-rich core. Now, iron has the peculiar property that any fusion or fission reaction involving the iron nucleus is endothermic, meaning that energy is absorbed rather than produced. Nucleosynthesis continues until the core is primarily iron-nickel metal. ![]()
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