Word: nuclei
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Fusion" of light elements, on which the hydrogen bomb depends, is the senior source of nuclear energy. More than 20 years ago, at Cambridge University, Physicists John D. Cockcroft and Ernest T. S. Walton shot hydrogen nuclei (protons) from a primitive high-voltage machine at a lithium target. A few of the protons hit lithium nuclei. The product of each such reaction: two atoms of helium and 17.3 million electron-volts of energy...
...bomb, the main charge is made up of liquefied hydrogen isotopes: tritium and deuterium. The precious tritium is the most reactive. It combines readily with deuterium, and the energy that results raises the temperature sufficiently to make deuterium nuclei combine in pairs, forming helium and giving off more energy...
...magnet is quiet, snoring softly, but in a ring-shaped vacuum chamber running around inside it, a dangerous, man-made genie throbs and thrashes. Out of an electric arc springs a swarm of protons (hydrogen nuclei). Powerful forces grab them and speed them down a channel toward the great machine. They sail into the chamber, and the magnet steers them in a circular orbit...
...Cole hinted strongly that hydrogen bombs have grown much better since 1952, and that still more improvement is in prospect. "The 1952 tests," he said, "did not mark the end of the line in hydrogen research. Terrible secrets still lie undiscovered in the fusion of nuclei. In due course, we can be sure, the ingenuity of man will ferret out these secrets...
...work was done under the Atomic Energy Commission, which is pushing similar work with beams of nitrogen and other large nuclei in many parts of the U.S. The AEC's long-range interest can be guessed at. When a nitrogen atom can be made to hit U-238, not normally considered fissionable, it almost always causes fission. When it forms Element 99, it liberates five free neutrons, and these are capable of causing fission too. AEC may be feeling for a new method of releasing atomic energy from difficult...