Word: atomics
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Television is an enigmatic sort of modern blessing. Like the atom and the automatic dishwasher, it has to be used carefully, or else it may do more harm than good. The University is wise in eyeing it with cautious suspicion...
Samuel P. Huntington, professor of Government, Arthur Smithies, professor of Economics, and Daniel S. Cheever, lecturer in Government, will join to consider how America should prepare for an atom or hydrogen-bomb attack...
...main trends of H-bomb development, however, are clear to all. An early step was to force the temperature of the fission detonator (atom bomb) as high as possible. One way to do this is to make the fission reaction more efficient. The early bombs "burned" only a fraction of their fissionable material. As they were improved, they burned more of it and reached higher temperatures. The improved bombs, even though not designed with hydrogen bombs in mind, were therefore more effective as detonators...
...bombs (the March 1 explosion may have been the first of them) use chemical forces instead of cold and pressure to keep their volatile hydrogen crammed into a small space. Their main charge is lithium hydride, a chemical compound containing one atom of lithium and one of hydrogen. Since it is a stable solid that needs no unusual treatment, its use eliminates the troubles connected with liquid hydrogen. It is the key to what airmen call a "transportable" H-bomb...
...plutonium bombs, whose fission products are naturally radioactive, a lithium-six deuteride bomb is only a moderate producer of radioactive contamination. Its end product, helium, is not radioactive at all. The detonator yields the normal products of fission, but they are no worse than those of an old-style atom bomb. Side reactions may produce radioactive isotopes, but they can be minimized. Apparently, they were minimized effectively in the H-bomb that exploded in the Marshall Islands on March...