A hydrogen bomb (Hydrogen Bomb, HB, VB) is a weapon of mass destruction with incredible destructive power (its power is estimated in megatons of TNT). The principle of operation of the bomb and the structure scheme is based on the use of the energy of thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei. The processes that take place during an explosion are similar to those that take place in stars (including the Sun). The first test of a WB suitable for transportation over long distances (project by A.D. Sakharov) was carried out in the Soviet Union at a training ground near Semipalatinsk.
thermonuclear reaction
The sun contains huge reserves of hydrogen, which is under the constant influence of ultra-high pressure and temperature (about 15 million degrees Kelvin). At such an extreme density and temperature of the plasma, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms randomly collide with each other. The result of collisions is the fusion of nuclei, and as a result, the formation of nuclei of a heavier element - helium. Reactions of this type are called thermonuclear fusion, they are characterized by the release of an enormous amount of energy.
The laws of physics explain the energy release during a thermonuclear reaction as follows: part of the mass of light nuclei involved in the formation of heavier elements remains unused and turns into pure energy in enormous quantities. That is why our celestial body loses approximately 4 million tons of matter per second, releasing a continuous flow of energy into outer space.
Isotopes of hydrogen
The simplest of all existing atoms is the hydrogen atom. It consists of only one proton, which forms the nucleus, and a single electron, revolving around it. As a result of scientific studies of water (H2O), it was found that the so-called "heavy" water is present in it in small quantities. It contains "heavy" isotopes of hydrogen (2H or deuterium), whose nuclei, in addition to one proton, also contain one neutron (a particle close in mass to a proton, but devoid of charge).
Science also knows tritium - the third isotope of hydrogen, the nucleus of which contains 1 proton and 2 neutrons at once. Tritium is characterized by instability and constant spontaneous decay with the release of energy (radiation), resulting in the formation of a helium isotope. Traces of tritium are found in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere: it is there, under the influence of cosmic rays, that the gas molecules that form the air undergo similar changes. It is also possible to obtain tritium in a nuclear reactor by irradiating the lithium-6 isotope with a powerful neutron flux.
Development and first tests of the hydrogen bomb
As a result of a thorough theoretical analysis, specialists from the USSR and the USA came to the conclusion that a mixture of deuterium and tritium makes it easiest to start a thermonuclear fusion reaction. Armed with this knowledge, scientists from the United States set about creating a hydrogen bomb in the 1950s. And already in the spring of 1951, a test test was carried out at the Eniwetok test site (an atoll in the Pacific Ocean), but then only partial thermonuclear fusion was achieved.
A little more than a year passed, and in November 1952, a second test of a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of about 10 Mt in TNT was carried out. However, that explosion can hardly be called an explosion of a thermonuclear bomb in the modern sense: in fact, the device was a large container (the size of a three-story house) filled with liquid deuterium.
In Russia, they also took up the improvement of atomic weapons, and the first hydrogen bomb of the A.D. Sakharova was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site on August 12, 1953. RDS-6 (this type of weapon of mass destruction was nicknamed Sakharov's puff, since its scheme implied the sequential placement of deuterium layers surrounding the initiator charge) had a power of 10 Mt. However, unlike the American "three-story house", the Soviet bomb was compact, and it could be quickly delivered to the place of release on enemy territory in a strategic bomber.
Having accepted the challenge, in March 1954 the United States exploded a more powerful aerial bomb (15 Mt) at a test site on the Bikini Atoll (Pacific Ocean). The test caused the release of a large amount of radioactive substances into the atmosphere, some of which fell with precipitation hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. The Japanese ship "Lucky Dragon" and instruments installed on the island of Roguelap recorded a sharp increase in radiation.
Since the processes occurring during the detonation of a hydrogen bomb produce stable, safe helium, it was expected that radioactive emissions should not exceed the level of contamination from an atomic fusion detonator. But the calculations and measurements of real radioactive fallout varied greatly, both in quantity and composition. Therefore, the US leadership decided to temporarily suspend the design of these weapons until a full study of their impact on the environment and humans.
Video: tests in the USSR
Tsar bomb - thermonuclear bomb of the USSR
The Soviet Union put a fat point in the chain of accumulating the tonnage of hydrogen bombs when, on October 30, 1961, a 50-megaton (largest in history) Tsar bomb was tested on Novaya Zemlya - the result of many years of work by the research group A.D. Sakharov. The explosion thundered at an altitude of 4 kilometers, and the shock wave was recorded three times by instruments around the globe. Despite the fact that the test did not reveal any failures, the bomb never entered service. But the very fact that the Soviets possessed such weapons made an indelible impression on the whole world, and in the United States they stopped gaining the tonnage of the nuclear arsenal. In Russia, in turn, they decided to refuse to put hydrogen warheads on combat duty.
A hydrogen bomb is the most complex technical device, the explosion of which requires a series of sequential processes.
First, the detonation of the initiator charge located inside the shell of the VB (miniature atomic bomb) occurs, which results in a powerful emission of neutrons and the creation of a high temperature required to start thermonuclear fusion in the main charge. A massive neutron bombardment of the lithium deuteride insert (obtained by combining deuterium with the lithium-6 isotope) begins.
Under the influence of neutrons, lithium-6 is split into tritium and helium. The atomic fuse in this case becomes a source of materials necessary for the occurrence of thermonuclear fusion in the detonated bomb itself.
The mixture of tritium and deuterium triggers a thermonuclear reaction, resulting in a rapid increase in temperature inside the bomb, and more and more hydrogen is involved in the process.
The principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb implies an ultra-fast flow of these processes (the charge device and the layout of the main elements contribute to this), which look instantaneous to the observer.
Superbomb: Fission, Fusion, Fission
The sequence of processes described above ends after the start of the reaction of deuterium with tritium. Further, it was decided to use nuclear fission, and not the fusion of heavier ones. After the fusion of tritium and deuterium nuclei, free helium and fast neutrons are released, the energy of which is sufficient to initiate the onset of fission of uranium-238 nuclei. Fast neutrons can split atoms from the uranium shell of a superbomb. The fission of a ton of uranium generates energy of the order of 18 Mt. In this case, energy is spent not only on the creation of an explosive wave and the release of an enormous amount of heat. Each uranium atom decays into two radioactive "fragments". A whole “bouquet” is formed from various chemical elements (up to 36) and about two hundred radioactive isotopes. It is for this reason that numerous radioactive fallout is formed, recorded hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, it became known that in the USSR they planned to develop the "Tsar Bomb", with a capacity of 100 Mt. Due to the fact that at that time there was no aircraft capable of carrying such a massive charge, the idea was abandoned in favor of a 50 Mt bomb.
Consequences of the explosion of the hydrogen bomb
shock wave
The explosion of a hydrogen bomb entails large-scale destruction and consequences, and the primary (obvious, direct) impact is of a threefold nature. The most obvious of all direct impacts is the ultra-high intensity shock wave. Its destructive ability decreases with distance from the epicenter of the explosion, and also depends on the power of the bomb itself and the height at which the charge detonated.
thermal effect
The effect of the thermal impact of an explosion depends on the same factors as the power of the shock wave. But one more is added to them - the degree of transparency of air masses. Fog or even a slight overcast dramatically reduces the radius of damage, at which a thermal flash can cause serious burns and loss of vision. An explosion of a hydrogen bomb (more than 20 Mt) generates an incredible amount of thermal energy, enough to melt concrete at a distance of 5 km, evaporate almost all the water from a small lake at a distance of 10 km, destroy enemy manpower, equipment and buildings at the same distance . In the center, a funnel is formed with a diameter of 1-2 km and a depth of up to 50 m, covered with a thick layer of vitreous mass (several meters of rocks with a high content of sand melt almost instantly, turning into glass).
According to calculations from real-world tests, people have a 50% chance of staying alive if they:
- They are located in a reinforced concrete shelter (underground) 8 km from the epicenter of the explosion (EV);
- They are located in residential buildings at a distance of 15 km from the EW;
- They will find themselves in an open area at a distance of more than 20 km from the EV in case of poor visibility (for a "clean" atmosphere, the minimum distance in this case will be 25 km).
With the distance from the EV, the probability of staying alive among people who find themselves in open areas also increases sharply. So, at a distance of 32 km, it will be 90-95%. A radius of 40-45 km is the limit for the primary impact from the explosion.
Fire ball
Another obvious impact from the explosion of a hydrogen bomb is self-sustaining firestorms (hurricanes), which are formed due to the involvement of colossal masses of combustible material in the fireball. But, despite this, the most dangerous consequence of the explosion in terms of impact will be radiation pollution of the environment for tens of kilometers around.
Fallout
The fireball that arose after the explosion is quickly filled with radioactive particles in huge quantities (decay products of heavy nuclei). The size of the particles is so small that when they get into the upper layers of the atmosphere, they are able to stay there for a very long time. Everything that the fireball reaches on the surface of the earth instantly turns into ashes and dust, and then is drawn into the fiery column. Flame vortices mix these particles with charged particles, forming a dangerous mixture of radioactive dust, the process of sedimentation of granules of which stretches for a long time.
Coarse dust settles quite quickly, but fine dust is carried by air currents over great distances, gradually falling out of the newly formed cloud. In the immediate vicinity of the EW, the largest and most charged particles settle, hundreds of kilometers from it, one can still see ash particles that are visible to the eye. It is they who form a deadly cover, several centimeters thick. Anyone who gets close to him runs the risk of receiving a serious dose of radiation.
Smaller and indistinguishable particles can "hover" in the atmosphere for many years, repeatedly going around the Earth. By the time they fall to the surface, they are pretty much losing their radioactivity. The most dangerous is strontium-90, which has a half-life of 28 years and generates stable radiation throughout this time. Its appearance is determined by instruments around the world. "Landing" on grass and foliage, it becomes involved in food chains. For this reason, strontium-90, which accumulates in the bones, is found in people thousands of kilometers from the test sites. Even if its content is extremely small, the prospect of being a "polygon for storing radioactive waste" does not bode well for a person, leading to the development of bone malignant neoplasms. In regions of Russia (as well as other countries) close to the places of test launches of hydrogen bombs, an increased radioactive background is still observed, which once again proves the ability of this type of weapon to leave significant consequences.
H-bomb video
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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". It was the fourth Soviet test of a nuclear weapon.
The beginning of the first work on the thermonuclear program in the USSR dates back to 1945. Then information was received about the research being conducted in the United States on the thermonuclear problem. They were initiated by the American physicist Edward Teller in 1942. Teller's concept of thermonuclear weapons was taken as the basis, which received the name "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. Only in 1950, the Americans found that the "pipe" was unpromising, 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.
Andrei Sakharov came up with an alternative scheme for the hydrogen bomb. 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, former Arzamas-16, Nizhny Novgorod region), the RDS-6s thermonuclear charge 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 creating such a weapon was to use the energy released during the explosion of an atomic bomb to heat and set fire to heavy hydrogen - deuterium, to carry out thermonuclear reactions with the release of energy that can support themselves. To increase the proportion of "burnt" deuterium, Sakharov proposed to surround the 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 "saccharization".
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 house.
To assess the destructive effects of the new bomb, a city was built at the Semipalatinsk test site from industrial and administrative buildings. In total, there were 190 different structures on the field. In this test, for the first time, vacuum intakes of radiochemical samples were used, which automatically opened under the action of a shock wave. In total, 500 different measuring, recording and filming devices installed in underground casemates and solid ground structures were prepared for testing the RDS-6s. Aviation and technical support of tests - measurement of the pressure of the shock wave on the aircraft in the air at the time 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 located 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 previous tests was removed to a safe distance, special structures were rebuilt in their own places on old foundations, a bunker was built 5 meters from the tower to install equipment developed at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which registers thermonuclear processes.
Military equipment of all types of troops was installed on the field. During the tests, all experimental structures within a radius of up to four kilometers were destroyed. The explosion of a hydrogen bomb could completely destroy a city 8 kilometers across. The environmental consequences of the explosion were horrendous: the first explosion accounted for 82% of strontium-90 and 75% of caesium-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 wits" on a truly global scale. The creation of the hydrogen bomb initiated the emergence of completely new scientific areas - the physics of high-temperature plasma, the physics of ultrahigh energy densities, and the 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 reserve, which was then used in the development of an incomparably more advanced hydrogen bomb of a fundamentally new type - a hydrogen bomb of a two-stage design.
The Sakharov-designed hydrogen bomb not only became a serious counterargument in the political confrontation between the USA and the USSR, but also caused the rapid development of Soviet cosmonautics in those years. It was after successful nuclear tests that 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, launched.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
On January 16, 1963, Nikita Khrushchev announced the creation of a hydrogen bomb in the USSR. And this is another occasion to recall the scale of its devastating consequences and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
On January 16, 1963, Nikita Khrushchev announced that a hydrogen bomb had been created in the USSR, after which nuclear tests were stopped. The Caribbean crisis of 1962 showed how fragile and defenseless the world can be against the backdrop of a nuclear threat, so in a senseless race to destroy each other, the USSR and the USA were able to reach a compromise and sign the first treaty that regulated the development of nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. in the atmosphere, space and under water, to which many countries of the world subsequently joined.
In the USSR and the USA, nuclear weapons tests have been conducted since the mid-1940s. The theoretical possibility of obtaining energy by thermonuclear fusion was known even before the Second World War. It is also known that in Germany in 1944, work was underway to initiate thermonuclear fusion by compressing nuclear fuel using charges of conventional explosives, but they were unsuccessful because they failed to obtain the required temperatures and pressures.
Over the 15 years of testing nuclear weapons in the USSR and the USA, many discoveries were made in the field of chemistry and physics, which led to the production of two types of bombs - atomic and hydrogen. The principle of their work is slightly different: if the explosion of an atomic bomb leads to the decay of the nucleus, then the hydrogen bomb explodes due to the synthesis of elements with the release of an enormous amount of energy. It is this reaction that takes place in the interiors of stars, where, under the influence of ultrahigh temperatures and gigantic pressure, hydrogen nuclei collide and merge into heavier helium nuclei. The resulting amount of energy is enough to start a chain reaction involving all possible hydrogen. That is why the stars do not go out, and the explosion of a hydrogen bomb has such destructive power.
How it works?
Scientists copied this reaction using liquid isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium, which gave the name "hydrogen bomb". Subsequently, lithium-6 deuteride, a solid compound of deuterium and an isotope of lithium, was used, which, in its chemical properties, is an analogue of hydrogen. Thus, lithium-6 deuteride is a bomb fuel and, in fact, turns out to be more "clean" than uranium-235 or plutonium, which are used in atomic bombs and cause powerful radiation. However, in order for the hydrogen reaction itself to start, something must very strongly and dramatically increase the temperatures inside the projectile, for which a conventional nuclear charge is used. But the container for thermonuclear fuel is made from radioactive uranium-238, alternating it with layers of deuterium, which is why the first Soviet bombs of this type were called "layers". It is because of them that all living things, even at a distance of hundreds of kilometers from the explosion and surviving the explosion, can receive a dose of radiation that will lead to serious illness and death.
Why does the explosion form a "mushroom"?
In fact, a mushroom-shaped cloud is an ordinary physical phenomenon. Such clouds are formed during ordinary explosions of sufficient power, during volcanic eruptions, strong fires and meteorite falls. Hot air always rises above cold air, but here it heats up so quickly and so powerfully that it rises in a visible column, twists into an annular vortex and pulls a "leg" behind it - a column of dust and smoke from the surface of the earth. Rising, the air gradually cools, becoming like an ordinary cloud due to the condensation of water vapor. However, that's not all. Much more dangerous for humans shock wave, diverging along the surface of the earth from the epicenter of the explosion along a circle with a radius of up to 700 km, and radioactive fallout falling from that very mushroom cloud.
60 Soviet hydrogen bombs
Until 1963, more than 200 nuclear test explosions were carried out in the USSR, 60 of which were thermonuclear, that is, in this case, not an atomic bomb, but a hydrogen bomb exploded. Three or four experiments could be carried out at the test sites per day, during which the dynamics of the explosion, striking abilities, and potential damage to the enemy were studied.
The first prototype was blown up on August 27, 1949, and the last test of a nuclear weapon in the USSR was made on December 25, 1962. All tests took place mainly at two sites - at the Semipalatinsk test site or "Siyap", located on the territory of Kazakhstan, and on Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
August 12, 1953: The first test of the hydrogen bomb in the USSR
The first hydrogen explosion was carried out in the United States in 1952 on the Eniwetok Atoll. There they carried out an explosion of a charge with a capacity of 10.4 megatons, which was 450 times the power of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, it is impossible to call this device a bomb in the truest sense of the word. It was a three-story building filled with liquid deuterium.
But the first thermonuclear weapon in the USSR was tested in August 1953 at the Semipalatinsk test site. It was already a real bomb dropped from an airplane. The project was developed in 1949 (even before the first Soviet nuclear bomb was tested) by Andrei Sakharov and Yuli Khariton. The power of the explosion was equivalent to 400 kilotons, but studies have shown that the power could be increased to 750 kilotons, since only 20% of the fuel was used up in a thermonuclear reaction.
The most powerful bomb in the world
The most powerful explosion in history was initiated by a group of nuclear physicists led by Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences I.V. Kurchatov on October 30, 1961 at the Dry Nose training ground on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The measured power of the explosion was 58.6 megatons, which was many times higher than all experimental explosions carried out on the territory of the USSR or the USA. It was originally planned that the bomb would be even larger and more powerful, but there was not a single aircraft that could lift more weight into the air.
The fireball of the explosion reached a radius of approximately 4.6 kilometers. Theoretically, it could grow to the surface of the earth, but this was prevented by a reflected shock wave, which lifted the bottom of the ball and threw it away from the surface. Nuclear mushroom explosion rose to a height of 67 kilometers (for comparison: modern passenger aircraft fly at an altitude of 8-11 kilometers). The appreciable wave of atmospheric pressure that arose as a result of the explosion circled the globe three times, spreading in just a few seconds, and the sound wave reached Dikson Island at a distance of about 800 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion (the distance from Moscow to St. Petersburg). Everything at a distance of two or three kilometers was contaminated with radiation.
Sergey LESKOV
On August 12, 1953, the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. It was the fourth Soviet test of a nuclear weapon. The power of the bomb, which had the secret code “RDS-6 s product,” reached 400 kilotons, 20 times more than the first atomic bombs in the USA and the USSR. After the test, Kurchatov turned to the 32-year-old Sakharov with a deep bow: “Thank you, the savior of Russia!”
Which is better - Bee Line or MTS? One of the most pressing issues of Russian everyday life. Half a century ago, in a narrow circle of nuclear physicists, the question was equally acute: which is better - an atomic bomb or a hydrogen bomb, which is also thermonuclear? The atomic bomb, which the Americans made in 1945, and we made in 1949, is built on the principle of releasing colossal energy by splitting heavy nuclei of uranium or artificial plutonium. A thermonuclear bomb is built on a different principle: energy is released by the fusion of light isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Materials based on light elements do not have a critical mass, which was a major design challenge in the atomic bomb. In addition, the synthesis of deuterium and tritium releases 4.2 times more energy than the fission of nuclei of the same mass of uranium-235. In short, the hydrogen bomb is a much more powerful weapon than the atomic bomb.
In those years, the destructive power of the hydrogen bomb did not scare away any of the scientists. The world entered the era of the Cold War, McCarthyism was raging in the United States, and another wave of revelations rose in the USSR. Only Pyotr Kapitsa allowed himself demarches, who did not even appear at the solemn meeting at the Academy of Sciences on the occasion of Stalin's 70th birthday. The question of his expulsion from the ranks of the academy was discussed, but the situation was saved by the President of the Academy of Sciences Sergei Vavilov, who noted that the first to be excluded was the classic writer Sholokhov, who skimps on all meetings without exception.
In creating the atomic bomb, as you know, intelligence data helped scientists. But our agents almost ruined the hydrogen bomb. The information obtained from the famous Klaus Fuchs led to a dead end for both Americans and Soviet physicists. The group under the command of Zeldovich lost 6 years to check the erroneous data. Intelligence provided the opinion of the famous Niels Bohr about the unreality of the "superbomb". But the USSR had its own ideas, to prove the prospects of which to Stalin and Beria, who were "chasing" the atomic bomb with might and main, was not easy and risky. This circumstance must not be forgotten in fruitless and stupid disputes about who worked harder on nuclear weapons - Soviet intelligence or Soviet science.
The work on the hydrogen bomb was the first intellectual race in human history. To create an atomic bomb, it was important, first of all, to solve engineering problems, to launch large-scale work in mines and combines. The hydrogen bomb, on the other hand, led to the emergence of new scientific areas - the physics of high-temperature plasma, the physics of ultrahigh energy densities, and the physics of anomalous pressures. For the first time I had to resort to the help of mathematical modeling. Lagging behind the United States in the field of computers (von Neumann's devices were already in use overseas), our scientists compensated with ingenious computational methods on primitive arithmometers.
In a word, it was the world's first battle of wits. And the USSR won this battle. Andrei Sakharov, an ordinary employee of the Zeldovich group, came up with an alternative scheme for the hydrogen bomb. Back in 1949, he proposed the original idea of the so-called "puff", where cheap uranium-238 was used as an effective nuclear material, which was considered as garbage in the production of weapons-grade uranium. But if this "waste" is bombarded by fusion neutrons, which are 10 times more energy-intensive than fission neutrons, then uranium-238 begins to fission and the cost of producing each kiloton decreases many times over. The phenomenon of ionization compression of thermonuclear fuel, which became the basis of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, is still called "saccharization". Vitaly Ginzburg proposed lithium deuteride as a fuel.
Work on the atomic and hydrogen bombs proceeded in parallel. Even before the atomic bomb tests in 1949, Vavilov and Khariton informed Beria about the "sloika". After the infamous directive of President Truman at the beginning of 1950, at a meeting of the Special Committee chaired by Beria, it was decided to speed up work on the Sakharov design with a TNT equivalent of 1 megaton and a test period in 1954.
On November 1, 1952, at Elugelub Atoll, the United States tested the Mike thermonuclear device with an energy release of 10 megatons, 500 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. However, "Mike" was not a bomb - a giant structure the size of a two-story house. But the power of the explosion was amazing. The neutron flux was so great that two new elements, einsteinium and fermium, were discovered.
All forces were thrown at the hydrogen bomb. The work was not slowed down either by the death of Stalin or by the arrest of Beria. Finally, on August 12, 1953, the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested in Semipalatinsk. The environmental consequences were horrendous. The share of the first explosion for the entire time of nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk accounts for 82% of strontium-90 and 75% of cesium-137. But then no one thought about radioactive contamination, as well as about ecology in general.
The first hydrogen bomb was the reason for the rapid development of Soviet cosmonautics. After the nuclear tests, the Korolyov Design Bureau was given the task of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile for this charge. This rocket, called the "seven", launched the first artificial satellite of the Earth into space, and the first cosmonaut of the planet, Yuri Gagarin, launched on it.
On November 6, 1955, the test of a hydrogen bomb dropped from a Tu-16 aircraft was carried out for the first time. In the United States, the drop of the hydrogen bomb did not take place until May 21, 1956. But it turned out that Andrei Sakharov's first bomb was also a dead end, and it was never tested again. Even earlier, on March 1, 1954, near Bikini Atoll, the United States blew up a charge of unheard of power - 15 megatons. It was based on the idea of Teller and Ulam about the compression of a thermonuclear assembly not by mechanical energy and a neutron flux, but by the radiation of the first explosion, the so-called initiator. After the ordeal, which turned into casualties among the civilian population, Igor Tamm demanded that his colleagues abandon all previous ideas, even the national pride of the “sloika” and find a fundamentally new way: “Everything that we have done so far is of no use to anyone. We are unemployed. I am sure that in a few months we will reach the goal.”
And already in the spring of 1954, Soviet physicists came up with the idea of an explosive initiator. The authorship of the idea belongs to Zeldovich and Sakharov. On November 22, 1955, a Tu-16 dropped a bomb with a design capacity of 3.6 megatons over the Semipalatinsk test site. During these tests, there were dead, the radius of destruction reached 350 km, Semipalatinsk suffered.
Ahead was a nuclear arms race. But in 1955 it became clear that the USSR had achieved nuclear parity with the United States.
HYDROGEN 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 thermonuclear fusion reaction of light nuclei. The energy source of the explosion are processes similar to those occurring on the Sun and other stars.
In 1961, the most powerful explosion of the hydrogen bomb took place.
On the morning of October 30 at 11:32 a.m. a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons of TNT was detonated over Novaya Zemlya in the area of Mityushi Bay at an altitude of 4000 m above the land surface.
The Soviet Union tested the most powerful thermonuclear device in history. Even in the "half" version (and the maximum power of such a bomb is 100 megatons), the energy of the explosion was ten times higher than the total power of all explosives used by all warring parties during the Second World War (including the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The shock wave from the explosion circled the globe three times, the first time in 36 hours and 27 minutes.
The flash of light was so bright that, despite the continuous cloudiness, it was visible even from the command post in the village of Belushya Guba (almost 200 km away from the epicenter of the explosion). The mushroom cloud rose to a height of 67 km. By the time of the explosion, while the bomb was slowly descending on a huge parachute from a height of 10500 to the calculated point of detonation, the Tu-95 carrier aircraft with the crew and its commander, Major Andrei Yegorovich Durnovtsev, was already in the safe zone. The commander returned to his airfield as a lieutenant colonel, Hero of the Soviet Union. In an abandoned village - 400 km from the epicenter - wooden houses were destroyed, and stone houses lost their roofs, windows and doors. For many hundreds of kilometers from the test site, as a result of the explosion, the conditions for the passage of radio waves changed for almost an hour, and radio communications ceased.
The bomb was designed by V.B. Adamsky, Yu.N. Smirnov, A.D. Sakharov, Yu.N. Babaev and Yu.A. Trutnev (for which Sakharov was awarded the third medal of the Hero of Socialist Labor). The mass of the "device" was 26 tons; a specially modified Tu-95 strategic bomber was used to transport and drop it.
The "superbomb", as A. Sakharov called it, did not fit in the aircraft's bomb bay (its length was 8 meters and its diameter was about 2 meters), so the non-power part of the fuselage was cut out and a special lifting mechanism and a device for attaching the bomb were mounted; while in flight, it still sticks out more than half. The entire body of the aircraft, even the blades of its propellers, was covered with a special white paint that protects against a flash of light during an explosion. The body of the accompanying laboratory aircraft was covered with the same paint.
The results of the explosion of the charge, which received the name "Tsar Bomba" in the West, were impressive:
* The nuclear "mushroom" of the explosion rose to a height of 64 km; the diameter of its cap reached 40 kilometers.
The burst fireball hit the ground and almost reached the bomb release height (i.e., the radius of the explosion fireball was approximately 4.5 kilometers).
* The radiation caused third-degree burns at a distance of up to one hundred kilometers.
* At the peak of the emission of radiation, the explosion reached a power of 1% of the solar one.
* The shock wave resulting from the explosion circled the globe three times.
* Atmospheric ionization has caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the test site for one hour.
* Witnesses felt the impact and were able to describe the explosion at a distance of a thousand kilometers from the epicenter. Also, the shock wave to some extent retained its destructive power at a distance of thousands of kilometers from the epicenter.
* The acoustic wave reached the island of Dixon, where the blast wave knocked out the windows in the houses.
The political result of this test was the demonstration by the Soviet Union of possession of an unlimited power weapon of mass destruction - the maximum megatonnage of a bomb from the United States tested by that time was four times less than that of the Tsar Bomba. Indeed, an increase in the power of a hydrogen bomb is achieved simply by increasing the mass of the working material, so that, in principle, there are no factors preventing the creation of a 100-megaton or 500-megaton hydrogen bomb. (In fact, the Tsar Bomba was designed for a 100-megaton equivalent; the planned explosion power was cut in half, according to Khrushchev, "So as not to break all the glass in Moscow"). With this test, the Soviet Union demonstrated the ability to create a hydrogen bomb of any power and a means of delivering the bomb to the detonation point.
thermonuclear reactions. The interior of the Sun contains a gigantic amount of hydrogen, which is in a state of superhigh 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 end in their merger 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, having a gigantic mass, 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 existing atoms. It consists of one proton, which is its nucleus, around which a single electron revolves. Careful studies of water (H 2 O) have shown that it contains negligible amounts of "heavy" water containing the "heavy isotope" of hydrogen - deuterium (2 H). The deuterium nucleus consists of a proton and a neutron, a neutral particle with a mass close to that of a proton.
There is a third isotope of hydrogen, 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 have been 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 obtained artificially in a nuclear reactor by irradiating the lithium-6 isotope with a neutron flux.
Development of the hydrogen bomb. A preliminary theoretical analysis showed that thermonuclear fusion is most easily carried out in a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Taking this as a basis, US scientists in the early 1950s began to implement a project to create a hydrogen bomb (HB). 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 4? 8 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 been detonating advanced megaton weapons.
The explosion on the Bikini Atoll was accompanied by the release of a large amount of radioactive substances. Some of them fell hundreds of kilometers from the site of the explosion onto the Japanese fishing vessel Lucky Dragon, while others covered the island of Rongelap. Since thermonuclear fusion produces stable helium, 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 actual radioactive fallout differed significantly in quantity and composition.
The mechanism of action of the hydrogen bomb. The sequence of processes occurring during the explosion of a hydrogen bomb can be represented as follows. First, the thermonuclear reaction initiator charge (a small atomic bomb) inside the HB shell explodes, resulting in a neutron flash and creating the high temperature necessary to initiate thermonuclear fusion. Neutrons bombard an insert made of lithium deuteride - a compound of deuterium with lithium (a lithium isotope with a mass number of 6 is used). Lithium-6 is split by neutrons into helium and tritium. Thus, the atomic fuse creates the materials necessary for 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 hydrogen in the fusion. With a further increase in temperature, a reaction between deuterium nuclei could begin, which is characteristic of a purely hydrogen bomb. All reactions, of course, proceed so quickly that they are perceived as instantaneous.
Division, synthesis, division (superbomb). In fact, in the 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 not the fusion of nuclei, but their fission. Fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei produces helium and fast neutrons, the energy of which is large enough to cause the fission of uranium-238 nuclei (the main isotope of uranium, much cheaper than the uranium-235 used in conventional atomic bombs). Fast neutrons split the atoms of the superbomb's uranium shell. The fission of one ton of uranium creates an energy equivalent to 18 Mt. Energy goes not only to the explosion and the release of heat. Each uranium nucleus is split into two highly radioactive "fragments". Fission products include 36 different chemical elements and nearly 200 radioactive isotopes. All this makes up the radioactive fallout that accompanies the explosions of superbombs.
Due 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.
