Word: a-bomb
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...modern reader, who will probably be more attentive to Puzo's vivid cynicism and gallows humor than to his gridlock plot. When two nutty M.I.T. students blow up Manhattan's sleazy Times Square area with a miniature A-bomb, it seems as if the author has urban renewal, not tragedy, on his mind...
...Saddam Hussein is certain to continue his quest for the A-bomb. -- The Soviet military's unhappiness is underscored by the crisis in Lithuania. -- Black-on-black violence diminishes the stature of Nelson Mandela. -- Mario Vargas Llosa "risks everything" and runs for President of Peru...
...Teller's design began to fall apart shortly after Truman launched his H-bomb program. Teller's idea had been to use the heat of a conventional A-bomb to ignite a separate H-bomb. But Ulam, a brilliant mathematician, made a series of calculations that showed that the amount of tritium fuel required for Teller's bomb was prohibitive and that even when sparked by an A-bomb, it would probably not achieve fusion...
...idea was the recognition that the fuel would burn more efficiently if it was compressed before it was heated. According to Bethe, Ulam approached Teller with a two-stage H-bomb design that used the shock waves from an A-bomb to compact the hydrogen and ignite the H-bomb. Teller adapted Ulam's design, using the energy of the A-bomb's radiation rather than the force of its shock waves to achieve the necessary compression. It was a bomb of this design, code named Mike, that exploded on Nov. 1, 1952, on the Pacific island of Elugelab...
More nuclear proliferation to worry the West: the prospect of the unpredictable Kim Il Sung with an A-bomb. Fears that North Korea might build one have escalated recently since U.S. spy satellites detected construction of what may be a nuclear reprocessing plant in Yongbyon, 56 miles north of the capital, Pyongyang. Such a unit would enable North Korea to produce plutonium, the raw ingredient for nuclear weapons...