Word: h-bomb
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...Harry Truman to launch an all-out program to develop the so-called Super Bomb. Two and a half years later, thanks to the determined efforts of Edward Teller and colleagues at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the U.S. detonated the first thermonuclear device, beating the Soviets to the H-bomb by more than three years...
Fuchs' betrayal of the H-bomb secrets passed into the folklore of the nuclear age. The folklore, however, is false. Fuchs' H-bomb plans were totally misleading, and Truman's rationale for rushing to build the bomb before the Soviets did was on shaky ground. That is the conclusion of an article in the January-February issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, one of a series of scholarly works that are rewriting a period of U.S. history still shrouded in mystery and official secrecy. According to Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews, what Fuchs gave the Soviets...
...bomb written by Hans Bethe in 1952 and only recently declassified. According to Bethe, who headed the theoretical-physics division at Los Alamos during World War II, 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...
...breakthrough 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...
...urged a fresh investigation and a tightening of procedures. Critics welcomed the recommendations but wondered why they came so late. Asked Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who released the report to the press: "Do we have to wait until Pakistan, Libya or South Africa announce they have got an H-bomb before we start taking the risk of diversion seriously...