Minimum hydrogen bomb power. H-bomb
H-bomb
HYDROGEN BOMB, a weapon of great destructive power (of the order of megatons in TNT equivalent), the principle of which is based on the reaction of thermonuclear fusion of light nuclei. The source of explosion energy is processes analogous to processes occurring on the Sun and other stars.
In 1961, the most powerful hydrogen bomb exploded.
On the morning of October 30 at 1132 a.m. above Novaya Zemlya in the area of \u200b\u200bMityusha Bay, at an altitude of 4000 m above the land surface, a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons of TNT was detonated.
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 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The shock wave from the explosion circled the globe three times, the first time in 36 hours 27 minutes.
The light flash was so bright that, despite the overcast, it was visible even from the command post in the village of Belushya Guba (almost 200 km from the epicenter of the explosion). The mushroom cloud has grown to a height of 67 km. By the time of the explosion, while the bomb was slowly descending from a height of 10,500 to the estimated point of detonation on a huge parachute, the Tu-95 carrier aircraft with the crew and its commander Major Andrei Yegorovich Durnovtsev was already in a safe zone. The commander was returning 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 ones lost their roofs, windows and doors. For many hundreds of kilometers from the landfill as a result of the explosion, the conditions for the passage of radio waves changed for almost an hour, and radio communication ceased.
The bomb was developed 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 strategic Tu-95 bomber was used for its transportation and discharge.
The “superbomb”, as A. Sakharov called it, did not fit in the bomb compartment of the aircraft (its length was 8 meters and its diameter was about 2 meters), so the non-force part of the fuselage was cut out and mounted a special lifting mechanism and device for holding the bomb; while in flight, she still more than half stuck out. The entire body of the aircraft, even the blades of its propellers, was coated with a special white paint that protects against light flashes during an explosion. The body of the accompanying laboratory aircraft was coated with the same paint.
The results of the charge explosion, which received the name "Tsar bomb" in the West, were impressive:
* The nuclear "mushroom" of the explosion rose to a height of 64 km; the diameter of his cap reached 40 kilometers.
The fireball burst reached the ground and almost reached the height of the bomb drop (that is, the radius of the fireball was about 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.
* The shock wave resulting from the explosion three times circled the globe.
* Ionization of the atmosphere has caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the landfill for one hour.
* Witnesses felt a blow and were able to describe the explosion thousands of kilometers from the epicenter. Also, the shock wave to some extent retained a destructive force at a distance of a thousand kilometers from the epicenter.
* The acoustic wave reached the island of Dixon, where the blast wave drove through the windows in the houses.
The political result of this test was a demonstration by the Soviet Union of possession of unlimited power weapons of mass destruction - the maximum megatonnom of the bombs tested by that time the US was four times less than that of the Tsar Bomb. In fact, an increase in the power of a hydrogen bomb is achieved by a simple increase in the mass of the working material, so, in principle, there are no factors preventing the creation of a 100-megaton or 500-megaton hydrogen bomb. (In fact, the Tsar Bomb was designed for a 100-megaton equivalent; the planned explosion power was cut in half, according to Khrushchev, “In order 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 means of delivering a bomb to a detonation point.
Thermonuclear reactions. In the bowels of the sun contains a giant amount of hydrogen, which is in a state of superhigh compression at a temperature of approx. 15,000,000 K. At such high temperatures and plasma densities, hydrogen nuclei experience constant collisions with each other, some of which result in 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, energy release during thermonuclear fusion is due to the fact that when a heavier nucleus is formed, part of the mass of light nuclei included in its composition turns into a colossal amount of energy. That is why the Sun, having a gigantic mass, daily loses approx. 100 billion tons of matter and releases energy, due to which life on Earth has become 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 rotates. Thorough studies of water (H 2 O) showed that there is an insignificant amount 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 the proton.
There is a third isotope of hydrogen - tritium, in the core of which there is one proton and two neutrons. 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 lithium-6 isotope with a neutron flux.
The development of a hydrogen bomb. Preliminary theoretical analysis showed that fusion is easiest to carry out in a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Taking this as a basis, US scientists in early 1950 began implementing a project to create a hydrogen bomb (HB). The first tests of a model nuclear device were carried out at the Enivetok training ground in the spring of 1951; 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 bomb was blown up in the USSR on August 12, 1953, and on March 1, 1954, on the Bikini Atoll, the Americans blew up a more powerful (approximately 15 Mt) bomb. Since then, both powers have carried out explosions of 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 scene of the explosion on the Japanese fishing vessel Happy Dragon, while others covered Rongelap Island. 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 actual fallout varied significantly in quantity and composition.
The mechanism of action of the hydrogen bomb. The sequence of processes that occur during the explosion of a hydrogen bomb can be represented as follows. First, the initiator of a thermonuclear reaction (a small atomic bomb) inside the HB shell explodes, resulting in a neutron burst and the high temperature necessary to initiate thermonuclear fusion. Neutrons bombard a liner of lithium deuteride - a compound of deuterium with lithium (a lithium isotope with a mass number of 6 is used). Under the influence of neutrons, lithium-6 is split 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 with tritium, the temperature inside the bomb is rapidly increasing, involving more and more hydrogen in the synthesis. With a further increase in temperature, a reaction between the nuclei of deuterium, characteristic of a purely hydrogen bomb, could begin. All reactions, of course, proceed so quickly 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 not nuclear fusion, but their division. The synthesis of deuterium and tritium nuclei produces helium and fast neutrons, the energy of which is high enough to cause fission of uranium-238 nuclei (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 a superbomb. The division of one ton of uranium creates an energy equivalent to 18 Mt. Energy goes not only to explosion and heat. Each uranium core is split into two highly radioactive “fragments”. The fission products include 36 different chemical elements and nearly 200 radioactive isotopes. All this makes up the fallout accompanying super-bomb explosions.
Thanks to the unique design and the described mechanism of action, weapons of this type can be made arbitrarily powerful. It is much cheaper than atomic bombs of the same power.
REPORT
H-bomb
The teacher checked:
Kuzmina L.G.
Compiled by:
Honey M.M.
student 9 "b"
MOU secondary school №10
HYDROGEN BOMB, a weapon of great destructive power (of the order of megatons in TNT equivalent), the principle of which is based on the reaction of thermonuclear fusion of light nuclei. The source of explosion energy is processes analogous to processes occurring on the Sun and other stars.
In 1961, the most powerful hydrogen bomb exploded.
On the morning of October 30 at 1132 a.m. above Novaya Zemlya in the area of \u200b\u200bMityusha Bay, at an altitude of 4000 m above the land surface, a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons of TNT was detonated.
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 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The shock wave from the explosion circled the globe three times, the first time in 36 hours 27 minutes.
The light flash was so bright that, despite the overcast, it was visible even from the command post in the village of Belushya Guba (almost 200 km from the epicenter of the explosion). The mushroom cloud has grown to a height of 67 km. By the time of the explosion, while the bomb was slowly descending from a height of 10,500 to the estimated point of detonation on a huge parachute, the Tu-95 carrier aircraft with the crew and its commander Major Andrei Yegorovich Durnovtsev was already in a safe zone. The commander was returning 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 ones lost their roofs, windows and doors. For many hundreds of kilometers from the landfill as a result of the explosion, the conditions for the passage of radio waves changed for almost an hour, and radio communication ceased.
The bomb was developed 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 strategic Tu-95 bomber was used for its transportation and discharge.
The “superbomb”, as A. Sakharov called it, did not fit in the bomb compartment of the aircraft (its length was 8 meters and its diameter was about 2 meters), so the non-force part of the fuselage was cut out and mounted a special lifting mechanism and device for holding the bomb; while in flight, she still more than half stuck out. The entire body of the aircraft, even the blades of its propellers, was coated with a special white paint that protects against light flashes during an explosion. The body of the accompanying laboratory aircraft was coated with the same paint.
The results of the charge explosion, which received the name "Tsar bomb" in the West, were impressive:
* The nuclear "mushroom" of the explosion rose to a height of 64 km; the diameter of his cap reached 40 kilometers.
The fireball burst reached the ground and almost reached the height of the bomb drop (that is, the radius of the fireball was about 4.5 kilometers).
* The radiation caused third-degree burns at a distance of up to one hundred kilometers.
* The shock wave resulting from the explosion three times circled the globe.
* Ionization of the atmosphere has caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the landfill for one hour.
* Witnesses felt a blow and were able to describe the explosion thousands of kilometers from the epicenter. Also, the shock wave to some extent retained a destructive force at a distance of a thousand kilometers from the epicenter.
* The acoustic wave reached the island of Dixon, where the blast wave drove through the windows in the houses.
The political result of this test was a demonstration by the Soviet Union of possession of unlimited power weapons of mass destruction - the maximum megatonnom of the bombs tested by that time the US was four times less than that of the Tsar Bomb. In fact, an increase in the power of a hydrogen bomb is achieved by a simple increase in the mass of the working material, so, in principle, there are no factors preventing the creation of a 100-megaton or 500-megaton hydrogen bomb. (In fact, the Tsar Bomb was designed for a 100-megaton equivalent; the planned explosion power was cut in half, according to Khrushchev, “In order 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 means of delivering a bomb to a detonation point.
The consequences of the explosion.
Shock wave and thermal effect. The direct (primary) effect of a superbomb explosion is threefold. The most obvious of the direct effects is a shock wave of tremendous intensity. The strength of its effect, depending on the power of the bomb, the height of the explosion above the surface of the earth and the nature of the terrain, decreases with distance from the epicenter of the explosion. The thermal effect of the explosion is determined by the same factors, but also 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, in an explosion in the atmosphere of a 20 megaton bomb, people will remain alive in 50% of cases if they
2) are located 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 the EV.
In conditions of poor visibility and at a distance of at least 25 km, if the atmosphere is clean, for people in open areas, the probability of surviving quickly increases with distance from the epicenter; at a distance of 32 km, its calculated value is more than 90%. The area over which the penetrating radiation that occurs during the explosion causes a fatal outcome is relatively small even in the case of a high power superbomb.
Fallout.
How are they formed. When a bomb explodes, a fireball that springs up 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 a ball of fire touches the surface of the Earth, everything that is on it, it turns into red-hot dust and ashes and draws them into a fiery tornado. In a whirlwind of flame, they mix and bind to radioactive particles. Radioactive dust, except the largest, does not settle immediately. Finer dust is carried away by the cloud resulting from the explosion and gradually falls out as it moves downwind. Directly at the site of the explosion, the fallout can be extremely intense - basically it is coarse dust settling on the ground. Hundreds of kilometers from the site of the explosion and at farther distances small particles of ash are still visible to the earth. Often they form a cover similar to the fallen snow, deadly for everyone who is nearby. Even smaller and invisible particles, before they settle on the ground, can wander in the atmosphere for months and even years, many times circling the globe. By the time they fall out, their radioactivity is significantly weakened. The most dangerous radiation is strontium-90 with a half-life of 28 years. Its loss is clearly observed throughout the world. Settling on foliage and grass, it enters food chains, including humans. As a result of this, significant amounts of strontium-90 were found in the bones of residents of most countries. The accumulation of strontium-90 in human bones in the long run is very dangerous, as it leads to the formation of bone malignant tumors.
On January 16, 1963, in the midst of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev announced to the world that the Soviet Union possessed in its arsenal a new weapon of mass destruction - the hydrogen bomb.
A year and a half before, the USSR carried out the most powerful hydrogen bomb in the world - a charge with a capacity of over 50 megatons was blown up on Novaya Zemlya. In many ways, this statement of the Soviet leader made the world aware of the threat of further escalation of the nuclear arms race: on August 5, 1963, an agreement was signed in Moscow to ban nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water.
History of creation
The theoretical possibility of generating 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 compressing nuclear fuel using charges of conventional explosives - but they were unsuccessful, since it was not possible to obtain the necessary temperatures and pressures. The USA and the USSR have been developing thermonuclear weapons since the 1940s, almost simultaneously testing the first thermonuclear devices in the early 1950s. In 1952, the U.S. Eniwetok Atoll launched a 10.4-megaton charge explosion (450 times the power of a bomb dropped on Nagasaki), and in 1953 a 400-kiloton device was tested in the USSR.
The designs of the first thermonuclear devices were poorly adapted for real combat use. For example, the device, tested by the United States in 1952, was a ground structure the height of a 2-storey building and weighing more than 80 tons. Liquid thermonuclear fuel was stored in it with the help of a huge refrigeration unit. Therefore, in the future, mass production of thermonuclear weapons was 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 test was conducted in the UK. In October 1961, a 58 megaton thermonuclear bomb was blown up in the USSR on Novaya Zemlya, the most powerful bomb ever tested by humanity, which went down in history as the Tsar Bomb. 
Further development was aimed at reducing the size of the design of hydrogen bombs to ensure their delivery to the target with ballistic missiles. Already in the 60s, the mass of 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 part can hit its own target. To date, the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom possess a thermonuclear arsenal; thermonuclear charges have also been tested in China (in 1967) and in France (in 1968). 
The principle of the hydrogen bomb
The action of the 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 bowels of stars, where under the influence of superhigh temperatures and gigantic pressure, hydrogen nuclei collide and merge into heavier helium nuclei. During the reaction, part of the mass of hydrogen nuclei turns into a large amount of energy - thanks to this, stars also 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 for the production of charges, and later lithium-6 deuteride, a solid substance, a compound of deuterium and lithium isotope began to be used.
Lithium-6 deuteride is the main component of the hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear fuel. Deuterium is already stored in it, and the lithium isotope serves as a raw material for the formation of tritium. To start the thermonuclear fusion reaction, it is required to create high temperature and pressure, as well as to separate tritium from lithium-6. These conditions are provided as follows. 
The explosion of the AN602 bomb immediately after separation of the shock wave. At that moment, the diameter of the ball was about 5.5 km, and after a few seconds it increased to 10 km.
The shell of the thermonuclear fuel container is made of uranium-238 and plastic, a regular nuclear charge with a capacity of several kilotons is placed next to the container - it is called a trigger, or charge-initiator of a hydrogen bomb. During the explosion of a plutonium-initiator charge under the influence of powerful x-ray radiation, the shell of the container turns into plasma, compressing thousands of times, which creates the necessary high pressure and huge temperature. At the same time, the neutrons emitted by plutonium interact with lithium-6, forming tritium. The deuterium and tritium nuclei interact under the action of ultrahigh temperatures and pressures, which leads to a thermonuclear explosion. 
The light from the explosion could cause third-degree burns up to a hundred kilometers away. This photo was taken from a distance of 160 km.
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 “layer” allows you to increase the explosion power almost unlimitedly. Thanks to this, a hydrogen bomb can be made of almost any power, and it will be much cheaper than a regular nuclear bomb of the same power. 
The seismic wave caused by the explosion circled the globe three times. The height of the nuclear fungus reached 67 kilometers in height, and the diameter of its "hat" - 95 km. The sound wave reached Dixon Island, located 800 km from the test site.
RDS-6S hydrogen bomb test, 1953