It has been man’s desire to reach new heights through war, science, and other feats worthy of memory within history. Thus, man discovered the ability to harness the destructive power of Hydrogen particles in the hopes to end the need to conduct more war and protect the people. Within this study the topics include of how a hydrogen bomb works, then what recent inventions and breakthroughs, and finally what the environmental hazards that come with harnessing such a force. The basic principle of the Teller–Ulam structure is the idea that different parts of a thermonuclear weapon can be connected together in "stages", the components are incased in a radiation case, a container which traps the primary's energy inside temporarily. The primary …show more content…
When fired, the plutonium-239 and/or uranium-235 core would be crushed to a smaller sphere by special layers of conventional high explosives arranged around it in an explosive lens pattern, starting the nuclear chain reaction that powers the standard "atomic bomb". The secondary is usually shown as a column of fuel and other parts wrapped in many layers. Inside this is the fusion fuel itself, usually a form of lithium deuteride, which is used because it is easier to be weaponized than liquefied tritium/deuterium gas. This dry fuel, when assaulted by neutrons, produces tritium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen which can undergo nuclear fusion, along with the deuterium present in the mixture. Inside the layer of fuel is the "spark plug", a hollow column of fissile material which, when compressed, can itself undergo nuclear fission. The tertiary, if one is present, would be set below the secondary and probably be made up of the same materials. The fission primary produces four types of energy: 1) …show more content…
In 1920 the British physicist Francis William Aston revealed that the total mass equal of four hydrogen atoms are heavier than the total mass of one helium atom, which implied that energy can be released by merging hydrogen atoms together to form helium, and introduced the mechanism by which the sun produces energy in a measurable quantity. A theory was verified by Hans Bethe in 1939 showing that beta decay and quantum tunneling in the Sun's core might convert one of the protons into a neutron and thus creating deuterium rather than a diproton. In 1942, nuclear fusion research was included into the Manhattan Project and the science became obscured by the secrecy surrounding the field. The first patent related to a fusion reactor was registered in 1946 by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the inventors being Sir George Paget Thomson and Moses Blackman. Starting in 1947, small experiments were carried out by two UK teams, who began building a series of ever-larger experiments. When the Huemul results hit the news, James L. Tuck, a UK physicist working at Los Alamos, introduced the pinch concept in the US and produced a series of machines known as the Perhapsatron. The first successful man-made fusion device was the boosted fission weapon tested in 1951 in the Greenhouse Item test. This was followed by true fusion weapons in 1952's Ivy Mike, and the first practical examples in 1954's Castle