From: mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 8 Oct 92 23:15:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: network.1b2ff7INNhut
Organization: Institute For Nonlinear Science, UCSD
NNTP-Posting-Host: lyapunov.ucsd.edu
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes:
: mbk@hamilton (Matt Kennel) writes:
: 
: > 
: > Today's New York Times, and this month's issue of Physics Today, (about
: > inertial confined fusion) reveal the 'secrets' of the hydrogen bomb.
: > They were declassified since other civilian scientists working in other
: > countries on inertial confined fusion already figured them out.
: > 
: > I'll get right down to it.
: > 
: > NYT:
: > 
: >   "The hydrogen bomb was invented in 1951 by Dr. Edward Teller and Dr. 
: > Stanislaw M. Ulam after Dr. Teller suggested that radiation from an
: > exploding atomic bomb could generate sufficient heat and pressure to
: > ignite fusion fuel.
: >    Dr Kidder{senior physicist at LANL} said Government officials thought
: > the concept of radiation implosion was so novel that it would be
: > extremely difficult for foreign scientists to come up with it on
: > their own."
: > 
: > The essential idea is that they have a "hohlraum" (german for hollow
: > room) made out of an unspecified "high-Z" material (nudge nudge wink
: > wink say no more) which reradiates X-rays that implode the pellet.
: 
: Matt,
: 
:         There is an even simpler explanation as to how H-bombs 
: work.  Simply put, the core is an atomic bomb, around this bomb is 
: loaded a sphere of tritium or deuterium (the fusionable fuel).
: Around all of this is placed a jacket of plutonium enriched 
: uranium, usually made from spent reactor rods.
: 
:         How this all works is simple, the A-bomb explodes causing 
: trillions of degrees of localized heat.  Faster than this 
: expanding heat is the neutrons which flow right through the heavy 
: hydrogens and cause fission reactions in the jacket.  Essentially 
: you will simultaneously have a bomb in the core blowing outward, 
: and the neutrons cause the jacket to explode both away from the 
: bomb and toward the center of the bomb (picture it in your mind).  
: You now have a nuclear bottle containing fusible fuel, being 
: squeezed with the force of two atom bombs, raised to temperatures 
: where fusion is now possible.

The question, does this really happen?

:  Result, great amounts of energy 
: released as the contents of the "nuclear bottle" break the 
: confines of the forces holding them in, resulting in an explosion.

I don't think this is how they work.  This sounds very much like
what the "classical super" design would be, i.e., it's the obvious
design.  I.e. start a thermonuclear detonation wave from the heat
& pressure from the fission explosion.

It's now well known (from public disclosures of the physical orientation of
the weapons, and the recent 'diagram' in the New York Times, and my old
nuclear physics textbook) that the fusion sections of weapons are not in
fact surrounding the fission section, but rather *adjacent* to it.

A design that would use the direct heat and pressure created by the fission
explosion, it would seem, would work best surrounding the fission section, I
would think, otherwise you're wasting most of your effort.  Only if
something can be "reflected" somehow, in this case x-rays, could I imagine
an advantage in not putting the fusion section surrounding the fission
section.

Remember, the NYT quotes scientists at LLNL who said it's the x-rays:

: >    Dr Kidder{senior physicist at LANL} said Government officials thought
: > the concept of radiation implosion was so novel that it would be
: > extremely difficult for foreign scientists to come up with it on
: > their own."

"Radiation implosion", and not a fission-triggered explosive shock wave.

I personally believe that there is still some more very important
tricks not yet revealed.

:         Of course I have not gone into details about how fission 
: works, everyone reading this sig already knows those details.  The 
: nuclear bottle works with amazing efficiency. 

Are you really sure?  Somebody here said that they think that
it was Bethe who discovered that the shock wave would radiate too much
energy (it's plasma, remember) to be efficient.

If a shock wave can radiate alot of EM energy, that means that it can
*absorb* EM energy too, right? 

: Given fixed amounts 
: of energy from fission core and jacket, you can have seemingly 
: unlimited amounts of fusion energy by simply adding more tritium.  
: The more fusible fuel you have, the bigger the bomb- the only 
: thing that changes is the diameter of the jacket of course.  The 
: core fission bomb remains the same always...............sq

Does the detonation wave really maintain itself?

--
-Matt Kennel  		mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu
-Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego
-*** AD: Archive for nonlinear dynamics papers & programs: FTP to
-***     lyapunov.ucsd.edu, username "anonymous".