Nuclear weapon design

Fission

When a free neutron hits the nucleus of a fissile atom like uranium-235 (²³⁵U), the uranium nucleus splits into two smaller nuclei called fission fragments, plus more neutrons (for ²³⁵U three about as often as two; an average of just under 2.5 per fission). The fission chain reaction in a supercritical mass of fuel can be self-sustaining because it produces enough surplus neutrons to offset losses of neutrons escaping the supercritical assembly. Most of these have the speed (kinetic energy) required to cause new fissions in neighboring uranium nuclei.^[6]

The uranium-235 nucleus can split in many ways, provided the atomic numbers add up to 92 and the mass numbers add up to 236 (uranium-235 plus the neutron that caused the split). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into strontium-95 (⁹⁵Sr), xenon-139 (¹³⁹Xe), and two neutrons (n), plus energy:^[7]

${\displaystyle \ {}^{235}\mathrm {U} +\mathrm {n} \longrightarrow {}^{95}\mathrm {Sr} +{}^{139}\mathrm {Xe} +2\ \mathrm {n} +180\ \mathrm {MeV} }$

The immediate energy release per atom is about 180 million electron volts (MeV); i.e., 74 TJ/kg. Only 7% of this is gamma radiation and kinetic energy of fission neutrons. The remaining 93% is kinetic energy (or energy of motion) of the charged fission fragments, flying away from each other mutually repelled by the positive charge of their protons (38 for strontium, 54 for xenon). This initial kinetic energy is 67 TJ/kg, imparting an initial speed of about 12,000 kilometers per second (i.e. 1.2 cm per nanosecond). The charged fragments' high electric charge causes many inelastic coulomb collisions with nearby nuclei, and these fragments remain trapped inside the bomb's fissile pit and tamper until their kinetic energy is converted into heat. Given the speed of the fragments and the mean free path between nuclei in the compressed fuel assembly (for the implosion design), this takes about a millionth of a second (a microsecond), by which time the core and tamper of the bomb have expanded to a ball of plasma several meters in diameter with a temperature of tens of millions of degrees Celsius.

This is hot enough to emit black-body radiation in the X-ray spectrum. These X-rays are absorbed by the surrounding air, producing the fireball and blast of a nuclear explosion.

Most fission products have too many neutrons to be stable so they are radioactive by beta decay, converting neutrons into protons by throwing off beta particles (electrons), neutrinos and gamma rays. Their half-lives range from milliseconds to about 200,000 years. Many decay into isotopes that are themselves radioactive, so from 1 to 6 (average 3) decays may be required to reach stability.^[8] In reactors, the radioactive products are the nuclear waste in spent fuel. In bombs, they become radioactive fallout, both local and global.^[9]

Meanwhile, inside the exploding bomb, the free neutrons released by fission carry away about 3% of the initial fission energy. Neutron kinetic energy adds to the blast energy of a bomb, but not as effectively as the energy from charged fragments, since neutrons do not give up their kinetic energy as quickly in collisions with charged nuclei or electrons. The dominant contribution of fission neutrons to the bomb's power is the initiation of subsequent fissions. Over half of the neutrons escape the bomb core, but the rest strike ²³⁵U nuclei causing them to fission in an exponentially growing chain reaction (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). Starting from one atom, the number of fissions can theoretically double a hundred times in a microsecond, which could consume all uranium or plutonium up to hundreds of tons by the hundredth link in the chain. Typically in a modern weapon, the weapon's pit contains 3.5 to 4.5 kilograms (7.7 to 9.9 lb) of plutonium and at detonation produces approximately 5 to 10 kilotonnes of TNT (21 to 42 TJ) yield, representing the fissioning of approximately 0.5 kilograms (1.1 lb) of plutonium.^[10][11]

Materials which can sustain a chain reaction are called fissile. The two fissile materials used in nuclear weapons are: ²³⁵U, also known as highly enriched uranium (HEU), "oralloy" meaning "Oak Ridge alloy",^[12] or "25" (a combination of the last digit of the atomic number of uranium-235, which is 92, and the last digit of its mass number, which is 235); and ²³⁹Pu, also known as plutonium-239, or "49" (from "94" and "239").^[13]

Uranium's most common isotope, ²³⁸U, is fissionable but not fissile, meaning that it cannot sustain a chain reaction because its daughter fission neutrons are not (on average) energetic enough to cause follow-on ²³⁸U fissions. However, the neutrons released by fusion of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium will fission ²³⁸U. This ²³⁸U fission reaction in the outer jacket of the secondary assembly of a two-stage thermonuclear bomb produces by far the greatest fraction of the bomb's energy yield, as well as most of its radioactive debris.

For national powers engaged in a nuclear arms race, this fact of ²³⁸U's ability to fast-fission from thermonuclear neutron bombardment is of central importance. The plenitude and cheapness of both bulk dry fusion fuel (lithium deuteride) and ²³⁸U (a byproduct of uranium enrichment) permit the economical production of very large nuclear arsenals, in comparison to pure fission weapons requiring the expensive ²³⁵U or ²³⁹Pu fuels.

Fusion

Fusion produces neutrons which dissipate energy from the reaction.^[14] In weapons, the most important fusion reaction is called the D-T reaction. Using the heat and pressure of fission, hydrogen-2, or deuterium (²D), fuses with hydrogen-3, or tritium (³T), to form helium-4 (⁴He) plus one neutron (n) and energy:^[15]

${\displaystyle {}^{2}\mathrm {D} +{}^{3}\mathrm {T} \longrightarrow {}^{4}\mathrm {He} +n+17.6\ \mathrm {MeV} }$

The total energy output, 17.6 MeV, is one tenth of that with fission, but the ingredients are only one-fiftieth as massive, so the energy output per unit mass is approximately five times as great. In this fusion reaction, 14 of the 17.6 MeV (80% of the energy released in the reaction) shows up as the kinetic energy of the neutron, which, having no electric charge and being almost as massive as the hydrogen nuclei that created it, can escape the scene without leaving its energy behind to help sustain the reaction – or to generate x-rays for blast and fire.^{[citation needed]}

The only practical way to capture most of the fusion energy is to trap the neutrons inside a massive bottle of heavy material such as lead, uranium, or plutonium. If the 14 MeV neutron is captured by uranium (of either isotope; 14 MeV is high enough to fission both ²³⁵U and ²³⁸U) or plutonium, the result is fission and the release of 180 MeV of fission energy, multiplying the energy output tenfold.^{[citation needed]}

For weapon use, fission is necessary to start fusion, helps to sustain fusion, and captures and multiplies the energy carried by the fusion neutrons. In the case of a neutron bomb (see below), the last-mentioned factor does not apply, since the objective is to facilitate the escape of neutrons, rather than to use them to increase the weapon's raw power.^{[citation needed]}

Tritium production

An essential nuclear reaction is the one that creates tritium, or hydrogen-3. Tritium is employed in two ways. First, pure tritium gas is produced for placement inside the cores of boosted fission devices in order to increase their energy yields. This is especially so for the fission primaries of thermonuclear weapons. The second way is indirect, and takes advantage of the fact that the neutrons emitted by a supercritical fission "spark plug" in the secondary assembly of a two-stage thermonuclear bomb will produce tritium in situ when these neutrons collide with the lithium nuclei in the bomb's lithium deuteride fuel supply.

Elemental gaseous tritium for fission primaries is also made by bombarding lithium-6 (⁶Li) with neutrons (n), only in a nuclear reactor. This neutron bombardment will cause the lithium-6 nucleus to split, producing an alpha particle, or helium-4 (⁴He), plus a triton (³T) and energy:^[15]

${\displaystyle {}^{6}\mathrm {Li} +n\longrightarrow {}^{4}\mathrm {He} +{}^{3}\mathrm {T} +5\ \mathrm {MeV} }$

But as was discovered in the first test of this type of device, Castle Bravo, when lithium-7 is present, one also has some amounts of the following two net reactions:

⁷Li + ¹n → ³T + ⁴He + ¹n

⁷Li + ²H → 2 ⁴He + ¹n + 15.123 MeV

Most lithium is ⁷Li, and this gave Castle Bravo a yield 2.5 times larger than expected.^[16]

The neutrons are supplied by the nuclear reactor in a way similar to production of plutonium ²³⁹Pu from ²³⁸U feedstock: target rods of the ⁶Li feedstock are arranged around a uranium-fueled core, and are removed for processing once it has been calculated that most of the lithium nuclei have been transmuted to tritium.

Of the four basic types of nuclear weapon, the first, pure fission, uses the first of the three nuclear reactions above. The second, fusion-boosted fission, uses the first two. The third, two-stage thermonuclear, uses all three.

Gun-type assembly

Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb, used 64 kg (141 lb) of uranium with an average enrichment of around 80%, or 51 kg (112 lb) of uranium-235, just about the bare-metal critical mass (see Little Boy article for a detailed drawing). When assembled inside its tamper/reflector of tungsten carbide, the 64 kg (141 lb) was more than twice critical mass. Before the detonation, the uranium-235 was formed into two sub-critical pieces, one of which was later fired down a gun barrel to join the other, starting the nuclear explosion. Analysis shows that less than 2% of the uranium mass underwent fission;^[17] the remainder, representing most of the entire wartime output of the giant Y-12 factories at Oak Ridge, scattered uselessly.^[18]

The inefficiency was caused by the speed with which the uncompressed fissioning uranium expanded and became sub-critical by virtue of decreased density. Despite its inefficiency, this design, because of its shape, was adapted for use in small-diameter, cylindrical artillery shells (a gun-type warhead fired from the barrel of a much larger gun).^{[citation needed]} Such warheads were deployed by the United States until 1992, accounting for a significant fraction of the ²³⁵U in the arsenal^{[citation needed]}, and were some of the first weapons dismantled to comply with treaties limiting warhead numbers.^{[citation needed]} The rationale for this decision was undoubtedly a combination of the lower yield and grave safety issues associated with the gun-type design.^{[citation needed]}

Implosion-type

For both the Trinity device and the Fat Man (Nagasaki) bomb, nearly identical plutonium fission through implosion designs were used. The Fat Man device specifically used 6.2 kg (14 lb), about 350 ml or 12 US fl oz in volume, of Pu-239, which is only 41% of bare-sphere critical mass (see Fat Man article for a detailed drawing). Surrounded by a U-238 reflector/tamper, the Fat Man's pit was brought close to critical mass by the neutron-reflecting properties of the U-238. During detonation, criticality was achieved by implosion. The plutonium pit was squeezed to increase its density by simultaneous detonation, as with the "Trinity" test detonation three weeks earlier, of the conventional explosives placed uniformly around the pit. The explosives were detonated by multiple exploding-bridgewire detonators. It is estimated that only about 20% of the plutonium underwent fission; the rest, about 5 kg (11 lb), was scattered.

An implosion shock wave might be of such short duration that only part of the pit is compressed at any instant as the wave passes through it. To prevent this, a pusher shell may be needed. The pusher is located between the explosive lens and the tamper. It works by reflecting some of the shock wave backward, thereby having the effect of lengthening its duration. It is made out of a low density metal – such as aluminium, beryllium, or an alloy of the two metals (aluminium is easier and safer to shape, and is two orders of magnitude cheaper; beryllium has high neutron-reflective capability). Fat Man used an aluminium pusher.

The series of RaLa Experiment tests of implosion-type fission weapon design concepts, carried out from July 1944 through February 1945 at the Los Alamos Laboratory and a remote site 14.3 km (8.9 mi) east of it in Bayo Canyon, proved the practicality of the implosion design for a fission device, with the February 1945 tests positively determining its usability for the final Trinity/Fat Man plutonium implosion design.^[19]

The key to Fat Man's greater efficiency was the inward momentum of the massive U-238 tamper. (The natural uranium tamper did not undergo fission from thermal neutrons, but did contribute perhaps 20% of the total yield from fission by fast neutrons). After the chain reaction started in the plutonium, it continued until the explosion reversed the momentum of the implosion and expanded enough to stop the chain reaction. By holding everything together for a few hundred nanoseconds more, the tamper increased the efficiency.

Plutonium pit

Main article: Pit (nuclear weapon)

The core of an implosion weapon – the fissile material and any reflector or tamper bonded to it – is known as the pit. Some weapons tested during the 1950s used pits made with U-235 alone, or in composite with plutonium,^[20] but all-plutonium pits are the smallest in diameter and have been the standard since the early 1960s.^{[citation needed]}

Casting and then machining plutonium is difficult not only because of its toxicity, but also because plutonium has many different metallic phases. As plutonium cools, changes in phase result in distortion and cracking. This distortion is normally overcome by alloying it with 30–35 mMol (0.9–1.0% by weight) gallium, forming a plutonium-gallium alloy, which causes it to take up its delta phase over a wide temperature range.^[21] When cooling from molten it then has only a single phase change, from epsilon to delta, instead of the four changes it would otherwise pass through. Other trivalent metals would also work, but gallium has a small neutron absorption cross section and helps protect the plutonium against corrosion. A drawback is that gallium compounds are corrosive and so if the plutonium is recovered from dismantled weapons for conversion to plutonium dioxide for power reactors, there is the difficulty of removing the gallium.^{[citation needed]}

Because plutonium is chemically reactive it is common to plate the completed pit with a thin layer of inert metal, which also reduces the toxic hazard.^[22] The gadget used galvanic silver plating; afterward, nickel deposited from nickel tetracarbonyl vapors was used,^[22] but thereafter and since, gold became the preferred material.^{[citation needed]} Recent designs improve safety by plating pits with vanadium to make the pits more fire-resistant.^{[citation needed]}

Levitated-pit implosion

The first improvement on the Fat Man design was to put an air space between the tamper and the pit to create a hammer-on-nail impact. The pit, supported on a hollow cone inside the tamper cavity, was said to be "levitated". The three tests of Operation Sandstone, in 1948, used Fat Man designs with levitated pits. The largest yield was 49 kilotons, more than twice the yield of the unlevitated Fat Man.^[23]

It was immediately clear^{[according to whom?]} that implosion was the best design for a fission weapon. Its only drawback seemed to be its diameter. Fat Man was 1.5 metres (5 ft) wide vs 61 centimetres (2 ft) for Little Boy.

The Pu-239 pit of Fat Man was only 9.1 centimetres (3.6 in) in diameter, the size of a softball. The bulk of Fat Man's girth was the implosion mechanism, namely concentric layers of U-238, aluminium, and high explosives. The key to reducing that girth was the two-point implosion design.^{[citation needed]}

Two-point linear implosion

In the two-point linear implosion, the nuclear fuel is cast into a solid shape and placed within the center of a cylinder of high explosive. Detonators are placed at either end of the explosive cylinder, and a plate-like insert, or shaper, is placed in the explosive just inside the detonators. When the detonators are fired, the initial detonation is trapped between the shaper and the end of the cylinder, causing it to travel out to the edges of the shaper where it is diffracted around the edges into the main mass of explosive. This causes the detonation to form into a ring that proceeds inward from the shaper.^[24]

Due to the lack of a tamper or lenses to shape the progression, the detonation does not reach the pit in a spherical shape. To produce the desired spherical implosion, the fissile material itself is shaped to produce the same effect. Due to the physics of the shock wave propagation within the explosive mass, this requires the pit to be a prolate spheroid, that is, roughly egg shaped. The shock wave first reaches the pit at its tips, driving them inward and causing the mass to become spherical. The shock may also change plutonium from delta to alpha phase, increasing its density by 23%, but without the inward momentum of a true implosion.^{[citation needed]}

The lack of compression makes such designs inefficient, but the simplicity and small diameter make it suitable for use in artillery shells and atomic demolition munitions – ADMs – also known as backpack or suitcase nukes; an example is the W48 artillery shell, the smallest nuclear weapon ever built or deployed. All such low-yield battlefield weapons, whether gun-type U-235 designs or linear implosion Pu-239 designs, pay a high price in fissile material in order to achieve diameters between six and ten inches (15 and 25 cm).^{[citation needed]}

Hollow-pit implosion

This section does not cite any sources. (October 2022)

A more efficient implosion system uses a hollow pit.^{[citation needed]}

A hollow plutonium pit was the original plan for the 1945 Fat Man bomb, but there was not enough time to develop and test the implosion system for it. A simpler solid-pit design was considered more reliable, given the time constraints, but it required a heavy U-238 tamper, a thick aluminium pusher, and three tons of high explosives.^{[citation needed]}

After the war, interest in the hollow pit design was revived. Its obvious advantage is that a hollow shell of plutonium, shock-deformed and driven inward toward its empty center, would carry momentum into its violent assembly as a solid sphere. It would be self-tamping, requiring a smaller U-238 tamper, no aluminium pusher, and less high explosive.^{[citation needed]}

Interstage

In a two-stage thermonuclear weapon the energy from the primary impacts the secondary. An essential^{[citation needed]} energy transfer modulator called the interstage, between the primary and the secondary, protects the secondary's fusion fuel from heating too quickly, which could cause it to explode in a conventional (and small) heat explosion before the fusion and fission reactions get a chance to start.^{[citation needed]}

There is very little information in the open literature about the mechanism of the interstage.^{[citation needed]} Its first mention in a U.S. government document formally released to the public appears to be a caption in a graphic promoting the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program in 2007. If built, this new design would replace "toxic, brittle material" and "expensive 'special' material" in the interstage.^[33] This statement suggests the interstage may contain beryllium to moderate the flux of neutrons from the primary, and perhaps something to absorb and re-radiate the x-rays in a particular manner.^[34] There is also some speculation that this interstage material, which may be code-named Fogbank, might be an aerogel, possibly doped with beryllium and/or other substances.^[35][36]

The interstage and the secondary are encased together inside a stainless steel membrane to form the canned subassembly (CSA), an arrangement which has never been depicted in any open-source drawing.^[37] The most detailed illustration of an interstage shows a British thermonuclear weapon with a cluster of items between its primary and a cylindrical secondary. They are labeled "end-cap and neutron focus lens", "reflector/neutron gun carriage", and "reflector wrap". The origin of the drawing, posted on the internet by Greenpeace, is uncertain, and there is no accompanying explanation.^[38]

Alarm Clock/Sloika

The first effort to exploit the symbiotic relationship between fission and fusion was a 1940s design that mixed fission and fusion fuel in alternating thin layers. As a single-stage device, it would have been a cumbersome application of boosted fission. It first became practical when incorporated into the secondary of a two-stage thermonuclear weapon.^[39]

The U.S. name, Alarm Clock, came from Teller: he called it that because it might "wake up the world" to the possibility of the potential of the Super.^[40] The Russian name for the same design was more descriptive: Sloika (Russian: Слойка), a layered pastry cake. A single-stage Soviet Sloika was tested as RDS-6s on August 12, 1953. No single-stage U.S. version was tested, but the code named Castle Union shot of Operation Castle, April 26, 1954, was a two-stage thermonuclear device code-named Alarm Clock. Its yield, at Bikini, was 6.9 megatons.^{[citation needed]}

Because the Soviet Sloika test used dry lithium-6 deuteride eight months before the first U.S. test to use it (Castle Bravo, March 1, 1954), it was sometimes claimed that the USSR won the H-bomb race, even though the United States tested and developed the first hydrogen bomb: the Ivy Mike H-bomb test. The 1952 U.S. Ivy Mike test used cryogenically cooled liquid deuterium as the fusion fuel in the secondary, and employed the D-D fusion reaction. However, the first Soviet test to use a radiation-imploded secondary, the essential feature of a true H-bomb, was on November 23, 1955, three years after Ivy Mike. In fact, real work on the implosion scheme in the Soviet Union only commenced in the very early part of 1953, several months after the successful testing of Sloika.^{[citation needed]}

Clean bombs

On March 1, 1954, the largest-ever U.S. nuclear test explosion, the 15-megaton Castle Bravo shot of Operation Castle at Bikini Atoll, delivered a promptly lethal dose of fission-product fallout to more than 6,000 square miles (16,000 km²) of Pacific Ocean surface.^[41] Radiation injuries to Marshall Islanders and Japanese fishermen made that fact public and revealed the role of fission in hydrogen bombs.

In response to the public alarm over fallout, an effort was made to design a clean multi-megaton weapon, relying almost entirely on fusion. The energy produced by the fissioning of unenriched natural uranium, when used as the tamper material in the secondary and subsequent stages in the Teller-Ulam design, can far exceed the energy released by fusion, as was the case in the Castle Bravo test. Replacing the fissionable material in the tamper with another material is essential to producing a "clean" bomb. In such a device, the tamper no longer contributes energy, so for any given weight, a clean bomb will have less yield. The earliest known incidence of a three-stage device being tested, with the third stage, called the tertiary, being ignited by the secondary, was May 27, 1956, in the Bassoon device. This device was tested in the Zuni shot of Operation Redwing. This shot used non-fissionable tampers; an inert substitute material such as tungsten or lead was used. Its yield was 3.5 megatons, 85% fusion and only 15% fission.^{[citation needed]}

The Ripple concept, which used ablation to achieve fusion using very little fission, was and still is by far the cleanest design. Unlike previous clean bombs, which were clean simply by replacing fission fuel with inert substance, Ripple was by design clean. Ripple was also extremely efficient; plans for a 15 kt/kg were made during Operation Dominic. Shot Androscoggin featured a proof-of-concept Ripple design, resulting in a 63-kiloton fizzle (significantly lower than the predicted 15 megatons). It was repeated in shot Housatonic, which featured a 9.96 megaton explosion that was reportedly >99.9% fusion.^[42]

The public records for devices that produced the highest proportion of their yield via fusion reactions are the peaceful nuclear explosions of the 1970s. Others include the 10 megaton Dominic Housatonic at over 99.9% fusion, 50-megaton Tsar Bomba at 97% fusion,^[43] the 9.3-megaton Hardtack Poplar test at 95%,^[44] and the 4.5-megaton Redwing Navajo test at 95% fusion.^[45]

The most ambitious peaceful application of nuclear explosions was pursued by the USSR with the aim of creating a 112 km (70 mi) long canal between the Pechora river basin and the Kama river basin, about half of which was to be constructed through a series of underground nuclear explosions. It was reported that about 250 nuclear devices might be used to get the final goal. The Taiga test was to demonstrate the feasibility of the project. Three of these "clean" devices of 15 kiloton yield each were placed in separate boreholes spaced about 165 metres (540 ft) apart at depths of 127 metres (417 ft). They were simultaneously detonated on March 23, 1971, catapulting radioactive plume into the air that was carried eastward by wind. The resulting trench was around 700 metres (2,300 ft) long and 340 metres (1,120 ft) wide, with an unimpressive depth of just 10 to 15 metres (30 to 50 ft).^[46] Despite their "clean" nature, the area still exhibits a noticeably higher (albeit mostly harmless) concentration of fission products, the intense neutron bombardment of the soil, the device itself and the support structures also activated their stable elements to create a significant amount of man-made radioactive elements like ⁶⁰Co. The overall danger posed by the concentration of radioactive elements present at the site created by these three devices is still negligible, but a larger scale project as was envisioned would have had significant consequences both from the fallout of radioactive plume and the radioactive elements created by the neutron bombardment.^[47]

On July 19, 1956, AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss said that the Redwing Zuni shot clean bomb test "produced much of importance ... from a humanitarian aspect." However, less than two days after this announcement, the dirty version of Bassoon, called Bassoon Prime, with a uranium-238 tamper in place, was tested on a barge off the coast of Bikini Atoll as the Redwing Tewa shot. The Bassoon Prime produced a 5-megaton yield, of which 87% came from fission. Data obtained from this test, and others, culminated in the eventual deployment of the highest-yielding US nuclear weapon known, and the highest yield-to-weight weapon ever made, a three-stage thermonuclear weapon with a maximum "dirty" yield of 25 megatons, designated as the B41 nuclear bomb, which was to be carried by U.S. Air Force bombers until it was decommissioned; this weapon was never fully tested.^{[citation needed]}

Third generation

First and second generation nuclear weapons release energy as omnidirectional blasts. Third generation^[48][49][50] nuclear weapons are experimental special effect warheads and devices that can release energy in a directed manner, some of which were tested during the Cold War but were never deployed. These include:

• Project Prometheus, also known as "Nuclear Shotgun", which would have used a nuclear explosion to accelerate kinetic penetrators against ICBMs.^[51]
• Project Excalibur, a nuclear-pumped X-ray laser to destroy ballistic missiles.
• Nuclear shaped charges that focus their energy in particular directions.
• Project Orion explored the use of nuclear explosives for rocket propulsion.

Fourth generation

The idea of "4th-generation" nuclear weapons has been proposed as a possible successor to the examples of weapons designs listed above. These methods tend to revolve around using non-nuclear primaries to set off further fission or fusion reactions. For example, if antimatter were usable and controllable in macroscopic quantities, a reaction between a small amount of antimatter and an equivalent amount of matter could release energy comparable to a small fission weapon, and could in turn be used as the first stage of a very compact thermonuclear weapon. Extremely-powerful lasers could also potentially be used this way, if they could be made powerful-enough, and compact-enough, to be viable as a weapon. Most of these ideas are versions of pure fusion weapons, and share the common property that they involve hitherto unrealized technologies as their "primary" stages.^[52]

While many nations have invested significantly in inertial confinement fusion research programs, since the 1970s it has not been considered promising for direct weapons use, but rather as a tool for weapons- and energy-related research that can be used in the absence of full-scale nuclear testing. Whether any nations are aggressively pursuing "4th-generation" weapons is not clear. In many case (as with antimatter) the underlying technology is presently thought to be very far from being viable, and if it was viable would be a powerful weapon in and of itself, outside of a nuclear weapons context, and without providing any significant advantages above existing nuclear weapons designs^[53]

Pure fusion weapons

Since the 1950s, the United States and Soviet Union investigated the possibility of releasing significant amounts of nuclear fusion energy without the use of a fission primary. Such "pure fusion weapons" were primarily imagined as low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons whose advantage would be their ability to be used without producing fallout on the scale of weapons that release fission products. In 1998, the United States Department of Energy declassified the following:

(1) Fact that the DOE made a substantial investment in the past to develop a pure fusion weapon

(2) That the U.S. does not have and is not developing a pure fusion weapon; and

(3) That no credible design for a pure fusion weapon resulted from the DOE investment.^[54]

Red mercury, a likely hoax substance, has been hyped as a catalyst for a pure fusion weapon.^{[citation needed]}

Cobalt bombs

A doomsday bomb, made popular by Nevil Shute's 1957 novel, and subsequent 1959 movie, On the Beach, the cobalt bomb is a hydrogen bomb with a jacket of cobalt. The neutron-activated cobalt would have maximized the environmental damage from radioactive fallout. These bombs were popularized in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; the material added to the bombs is referred to in the film as 'cobalt-thorium G'.^{[citation needed]}

Such "salted" weapons were investigated by U.S. Department of Defense.^[55] Fission products are as deadly as neutron-activated cobalt.

Initially, gamma radiation from the fission products of an equivalent size fission-fusion-fission bomb are much more intense than Cobalt-60 (⁶⁰
Co
): 15,000 times more intense at 1 hour; 35 times more intense at 1 week; 5 times more intense at 1 month; and about equal at 6 months. Thereafter fission drops off rapidly so that ⁶⁰
Co
fallout is 8 times more intense than fission at 1 year and 150 times more intense at 5 years. The very long-lived isotopes produced by fission would overtake the ⁶⁰
Co
again after about 75 years.^[56]

The triple "taiga" nuclear salvo test, as part of the preliminary March 1971 Pechora–Kama Canal project, produced a small amount of fission products and therefore a comparatively large amount of case material activated products are responsible for most of the residual activity at the site today, namely ⁶⁰
Co
. As of 2011,^[update] fusion generated neutron activation was responsible for about half of the gamma dose at the test site. That dose is too small to cause deleterious effects, and normal green vegetation exists all around the lake that was formed.^[57][58]

Arbitrarily large multi-staged devices

The idea of a device which has an arbitrarily large number of Teller-Ulam stages, with each driving a larger radiation-driven implosion than the preceding stage, is frequently suggested,^[59][60] but technically disputed.^[61] There are "well-known sketches and some reasonable-looking calculations in the open literature about two-stage weapons, but no similarly accurate descriptions of true three stage concepts."^[61]

During the mid-1950s through early 1960s, scientists working in the weapons laboratories of the United States investigated weapons concepts as large as 1,000 megatons,^[62] and Edward Teller announced the design of a 10,000-megaton weapon code-named SUNDIAL at a meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission.^[63] Much of the information about these efforts remains classified,^[64][65] but such "gigaton" range weapons do not appear to have made it beyond theoretical investigations.

While both the US and Soviet Union investigated (and in the case of the Soviets, tested) "very high yield" (e.g. 50 to 100-megaton) weapons designs in the 1950s and early 1960s,^[66] these appear to represent the upper-limit of Cold War weapon yields pursued seriously, and were so physically heavy and massive that they could not be carried entirely within the bomb bays of the largest bombers. Cold War warhead development trends from the mid-1960s onward, and especially after the Limited Test Ban Treaty, instead resulted in highly-compact warheads with yields in the range from hundreds of kilotons to the low megatons that gave greater options for deliverability.

Following the concern caused by the estimated gigaton scale of the 1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on the planet Jupiter, in a 1995 meeting at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Edward Teller proposed to a collective of U.S. and Russian ex-Cold War weapons designers that they collaborate on designing a 1,000-megaton nuclear explosive device for diverting extinction-class asteroids (10+ km in diameter), which would be employed in the event that one of these asteroids were on an impact trajectory with Earth.^[67][68][69]

Neutron bombs

A neutron bomb, technically referred to as an enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), is a type of tactical nuclear weapon designed specifically to release a large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation. This contrasts with standard thermonuclear weapons, which are designed to capture this intense neutron radiation to increase its overall explosive yield. In terms of yield, ERWs typically produce about one-tenth that of a fission-type atomic weapon. Even with their significantly lower explosive power, ERWs are still capable of much greater destruction than any conventional bomb. Meanwhile, relative to other nuclear weapons, damage is more focused on biological material than on material infrastructure (though extreme blast and heat effects are not eliminated).^{[citation needed]}

ERWs are more accurately described as suppressed yield weapons. When the yield of a nuclear weapon is less than one kiloton, its lethal radius from blast, 700 m (2,300 ft), is less than that from its neutron radiation. However, the blast is more than potent enough to destroy most structures, which are less resistant to blast effects than even unprotected human beings. Blast pressures of upwards of 20 psi (140 kPa) are survivable, whereas most buildings will collapse with a pressure of only 5 psi (30 kPa).^{[citation needed]}

Commonly misconceived as a weapon designed to kill populations and leave infrastructure intact, these bombs (as mentioned above) are still very capable of leveling buildings over a large radius. The intent of their design was to kill tank crews – tanks giving excellent protection against blast and heat, surviving (relatively) very close to a detonation. Given the Soviets' vast tank forces during the Cold War, this was the perfect weapon to counter them. The neutron radiation could instantly incapacitate a tank crew out to roughly the same distance that the heat and blast would incapacitate an unprotected human (depending on design). The tank chassis would also be rendered highly radioactive, temporarily preventing its re-use by a fresh crew.^{[citation needed]}

Neutron weapons were also intended for use in other applications, however. For example, they are effective in anti-nuclear defenses – the neutron flux being capable of neutralising an incoming warhead at a greater range than heat or blast. Nuclear warheads are very resistant to physical damage, but are very difficult to harden against extreme neutron flux.^{[citation needed]}

ERWs were two-stage thermonuclears with all non-essential uranium removed to minimize fission yield. Fusion provided the neutrons. Developed in the 1950s, they were first deployed in the 1970s, by U.S. forces in Europe. The last ones were retired in the 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

A neutron bomb is only feasible if the yield is sufficiently high that efficient fusion stage ignition is possible, and if the yield is low enough that the case thickness will not absorb too many neutrons. This means that neutron bombs have a yield range of 1–10 kilotons, with fission proportion varying from 50% at 1 kiloton to 25% at 10 kilotons (all of which comes from the primary stage). The neutron output per kiloton is then 10 to 15 times greater than for a pure fission implosion weapon or for a strategic warhead like a W87 or W88.^[70]

Lawrence Berkeley

The first systematic exploration of nuclear weapon design concepts took place in mid-1942 at the University of California, Berkeley. Important early discoveries had been made at the adjacent Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, such as the 1940 cyclotron-made production and isolation of plutonium. A Berkeley professor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, had just been hired to run the nation's secret bomb design effort. His first act was to convene the 1942 summer conference.^{[citation needed]}

By the time he moved his operation to the new secret town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the spring of 1943, the accumulated wisdom on nuclear weapon design consisted of five lectures by Berkeley professor Robert Serber, transcribed and distributed as the (classified but now fully declassified and widely available online as a PDF) Los Alamos Primer.^[72] The Primer addressed fission energy, neutron production and capture, nuclear chain reactions, critical mass, tampers, predetonation, and three methods of assembling a bomb: gun assembly, implosion, and "autocatalytic methods", the one approach that turned out to be a dead end.^{[citation needed]}

Los Alamos

At Los Alamos, it was found in April 1944 by Emilio Segrè that the proposed Thin Man Gun assembly type bomb would not work for plutonium because of predetonation problems caused by Pu-240 impurities. So Fat Man, the implosion-type bomb, was given high priority as the only option for plutonium. The Berkeley discussions had generated theoretical estimates of critical mass, but nothing precise. The main wartime job at Los Alamos was the experimental determination of critical mass, which had to wait until sufficient amounts of fissile material arrived from the production plants: uranium from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and plutonium from the Hanford Site in Washington.^{[citation needed]}

In 1945, using the results of critical mass experiments, Los Alamos technicians fabricated and assembled components for four bombs: the Trinity Gadget, Little Boy, Fat Man, and an unused spare Fat Man. After the war, those who could, including Oppenheimer, returned to university teaching positions. Those who remained worked on levitated and hollow pits and conducted weapon effects tests such as Crossroads Able and Baker at Bikini Atoll in 1946.^{[citation needed]}

All of the essential ideas for incorporating fusion into nuclear weapons originated at Los Alamos between 1946 and 1952. After the Teller-Ulam radiation implosion breakthrough of 1951, the technical implications and possibilities were fully explored, but ideas not directly relevant to making the largest possible bombs for long-range Air Force bombers were shelved.^{[citation needed]}

Because of Oppenheimer's initial position in the H-bomb debate, in opposition to large thermonuclear weapons, and the assumption that he still had influence over Los Alamos despite his departure, political allies of Edward Teller decided he needed his own laboratory in order to pursue H-bombs. By the time it was opened in 1952, in Livermore, California, Los Alamos had finished the job Livermore was designed to do.^{[citation needed]}

Lawrence Livermore

With its original mission no longer available, the Livermore lab tried radical new designs that failed. Its first three nuclear tests were fizzles: in 1953, two single-stage fission devices with uranium hydride pits, and in 1954, a two-stage thermonuclear device in which the secondary heated up prematurely, too fast for radiation implosion to work properly.^{[citation needed]}

Shifting gears, Livermore settled for taking ideas Los Alamos had shelved and developing them for the Army and Navy. This led Livermore to specialize in small-diameter tactical weapons, particularly ones using two-point implosion systems, such as the Swan. Small-diameter tactical weapons became primaries for small-diameter secondaries. Around 1960, when the superpower arms race became a ballistic missile race, Livermore warheads were more useful than the large, heavy Los Alamos warheads. Los Alamos warheads were used on the first intermediate-range ballistic missiles, IRBMs, but smaller Livermore warheads were used on the first intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, SLBMs, as well as on the first multiple warhead systems on such missiles.^[73]

In 1957 and 1958, both labs built and tested as many designs as possible, in anticipation that a planned 1958 test ban might become permanent. By the time testing resumed in 1961 the two labs had become duplicates of each other, and design jobs were assigned more on workload considerations than lab specialty. Some designs were horse-traded. For example, the W38 warhead for the Titan I missile started out as a Livermore project, was given to Los Alamos when it became the Atlas missile warhead, and in 1959 was given back to Livermore, in trade for the W54 Davy Crockett warhead, which went from Livermore to Los Alamos.^{[citation needed]}

Warhead designs after 1960 took on the character of model changes, with every new missile getting a new warhead for marketing reasons. The chief substantive change involved packing more fissile uranium-235 into the secondary, as it became available with continued uranium enrichment and the dismantlement of the large high-yield bombs.^{[citation needed]}

Starting with the Nova facility at Livermore in the mid-1980s, nuclear design activity pertaining to radiation-driven implosion was informed by research with indirect drive laser fusion. This work was part of the effort to investigate Inertial Confinement Fusion. Similar work continues at the more powerful National Ignition Facility. The Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program also benefited from research performed at NIF.^{[citation needed]}

Light pipes

An important tool for test analysis was the diagnostic light pipe. A probe inside a test device could transmit information by heating a plate of metal to incandescence, an event that could be recorded by instruments located at the far end of a long, very straight pipe.^{[citation needed]}

The picture below shows the Shrimp device, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini, as the Castle Bravo test. Its 15-megaton explosion was the largest ever by the United States. The silhouette of a man is shown for scale. The device is supported from below, at the ends. The pipes going into the shot cab ceiling, which appear to be supports, are actually diagnostic light pipes. The eight pipes at the right end (1) sent information about the detonation of the primary. Two in the middle (2) marked the time when X-rays from the primary reached the radiation channel around the secondary. The last two pipes (3) noted the time radiation reached the far end of the radiation channel, the difference between (2) and (3) being the radiation transit time for the channel.^[75]

From the shot cab, the pipes turned horizontally and traveled 2.3 km (7,500 ft) along a causeway built on the Bikini reef to a remote-controlled data collection bunker on Namu Island.^{[citation needed]}

While x-rays would normally travel at the speed of light through a low-density material like the plastic foam channel filler between (2) and (3), the intensity of radiation from the exploding primary creates a relatively opaque radiation front in the channel filler, which acts like a slow-moving logjam to retard the passage of radiant energy. While the secondary is being compressed via radiation-induced ablation, neutrons from the primary catch up with the x-rays, penetrate into the secondary, and start breeding tritium via the third reaction noted in the first section above. This ⁶Li + n reaction is exothermic, producing 5 MeV per event. The spark plug has not yet been compressed and thus remains subcritical, so no significant fission or fusion takes place as a result. If enough neutrons arrive before implosion of the secondary is complete, though, the crucial temperature differential between the outer and inner parts of the secondary can be degraded, potentially causing the secondary to fail to ignite. The first Livermore-designed thermonuclear weapon, the Morgenstern device, failed in this manner when it was tested as Castle Koon on April 7, 1954. The primary ignited, but the secondary, preheated by the primary's neutron wave, suffered what was termed as an inefficient detonation;^[76]: 165 thus, a weapon with a predicted one-megaton yield produced only 110 kilotons, of which merely 10 kt were attributed to fusion.^[77]: 316

These timing effects, and any problems they cause, are measured by light-pipe data. The mathematical simulations which they calibrate are called radiation flow hydrodynamics codes, or channel codes. They are used to predict the effect of future design modifications.^{[citation needed]}

It is not clear from the public record how successful the Shrimp light pipes were. The unmanned data bunker was far enough back to remain outside the mile-wide crater, but the 15-megaton blast, two and a half times as powerful as expected, breached the bunker by blowing its 20-ton door off the hinges and across the inside of the bunker. (The nearest people were 32 kilometres (20 mi) farther away, in a bunker that survived intact.)^[78]

Fallout analysis

The most interesting data from Castle Bravo came from radio-chemical analysis of weapon debris in fallout. Because of a shortage of enriched lithium-6, 60% of the lithium in the Shrimp secondary was ordinary lithium-7, which doesn't breed tritium as easily as lithium-6 does. But it does breed lithium-6 as the product of an (n, 2n) reaction (one neutron in, two neutrons out), a known fact, but with unknown probability. The probability turned out to be high.^{[citation needed]}

Fallout analysis revealed to designers that, with the (n, 2n) reaction, the Shrimp secondary effectively had two and half times as much lithium-6 as expected. The tritium, the fusion yield, the neutrons, and the fission yield were all increased accordingly.^[79]

As noted above, Bravo's fallout analysis also told the outside world, for the first time, that thermonuclear bombs are more fission devices than fusion devices. A Japanese fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryū Maru, sailed home with enough fallout on her decks to allow scientists in Japan and elsewhere to determine, and announce, that most of the fallout had come from the fission of U-238 by fusion-produced 14 MeV neutrons.^{[citation needed]}

Underground testing

The global alarm over radioactive fallout, which began with the Castle Bravo event, eventually drove nuclear testing literally underground. The last U.S. above-ground test took place at Johnston Island on November 4, 1962. During the next three decades, until September 23, 1992, the United States conducted an average of 2.4 underground nuclear explosions per month, all but a few at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) northwest of Las Vegas.^{[citation needed]}

The Yucca Flat section of the NTS is covered with subsidence craters resulting from the collapse of terrain over radioactive caverns created by nuclear explosions (see photo).

After the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT), which limited underground explosions to 150 kilotons or less, warheads like the half-megaton W88 had to be tested at less than full yield. Since the primary must be detonated at full yield in order to generate data about the implosion of the secondary, the reduction in yield had to come from the secondary. Replacing much of the lithium-6 deuteride fusion fuel with lithium-7 hydride limited the tritium available for fusion, and thus the overall yield, without changing the dynamics of the implosion. The functioning of the device could be evaluated using light pipes, other sensing devices, and analysis of trapped weapon debris. The full yield of the stockpiled weapon could be calculated by extrapolation.^{[citation needed]}

Gun-type

It is inherently dangerous to have a weapon containing a quantity and shape of fissile material which can form a critical mass through a relatively simple accident. Because of this danger, the propellant in Little Boy (four bags of cordite) was inserted into the bomb in flight, shortly after takeoff on August 6, 1945. This was the first time a gun-type nuclear weapon had ever been fully assembled.^{[citation needed]}

If the weapon falls into water, the moderating effect of the water can also cause a criticality accident, even without the weapon being physically damaged. Similarly, a fire caused by an aircraft crashing could easily ignite the propellant, with catastrophic results. Gun-type weapons have always been inherently unsafe.^{[citation needed]}

In-flight pit insertion

Neither of these effects is likely with implosion weapons since there is normally insufficient fissile material to form a critical mass without the correct detonation of the lenses. However, the earliest implosion weapons had pits so close to criticality that accidental detonation with some nuclear yield was a concern.^{[citation needed]}

On August 9, 1945, Fat Man was loaded onto its airplane fully assembled, but later, when levitated pits made a space between the pit and the tamper, it was feasible to use in-flight pit insertion. The bomber would take off with no fissile material in the bomb. Some older implosion-type weapons, such as the US Mark 4 and Mark 5, used this system.^{[citation needed]}

In-flight pit insertion will not work with a hollow pit in contact with its tamper.^{[citation needed]}

Steel ball safety method

As shown in the diagram above, one method used to decrease the likelihood of accidental detonation employed metal balls. The balls were emptied into the pit: this prevented detonation by increasing the density of the hollow pit, thereby preventing symmetrical implosion in the event of an accident. This design was used in the Green Grass weapon, also known as the Interim Megaton Weapon, which was used in the Violet Club and Yellow Sun Mk.1 bombs.^{[citation needed]}

Chain safety method

Alternatively, the pit can be "safed" by having its normally hollow core filled with an inert material such as a fine metal chain, possibly made of cadmium to absorb neutrons. While the chain is in the center of the pit, the pit cannot be compressed into an appropriate shape to fission; when the weapon is to be armed, the chain is removed. Similarly, although a serious fire could detonate the explosives, destroying the pit and spreading plutonium to contaminate the surroundings as has happened in several weapons accidents, it could not cause a nuclear explosion.^{[citation needed]}

One-point safety

While the firing of one detonator out of many will not cause a hollow pit to go critical, especially a low-mass hollow pit that requires boosting, the introduction of two-point implosion systems made that possibility a real concern.^{[citation needed]}

In a two-point system, if one detonator fires, one entire hemisphere of the pit will implode as designed. The high-explosive charge surrounding the other hemisphere will explode progressively, from the equator toward the opposite pole. Ideally, this will pinch the equator and squeeze the second hemisphere away from the first, like toothpaste in a tube. By the time the explosion envelops it, its implosion will be separated both in time and space from the implosion of the first hemisphere. The resulting dumbbell shape, with each end reaching maximum density at a different time, may not become critical.^{[citation needed]}

It is not possible to tell on the drawing board how this will play out. Nor is it possible using a dummy pit of U-238 and high-speed x-ray cameras, although such tests are helpful. For final determination, a test needs to be made with real fissile material. Consequently, starting in 1957, a year after Swan, both labs began one-point safety tests.^{[citation needed]}

Out of 25 one-point safety tests conducted in 1957 and 1958, seven had zero or slight nuclear yield (success), three had high yields of 300 t to 500 t (severe failure), and the rest had unacceptable yields between those extremes.^{[citation needed]}

Of particular concern was Livermore's W47, which generated unacceptably high yields in one-point testing. To prevent an accidental detonation, Livermore decided to use mechanical safing on the W47. The wire safety scheme described below was the result.^{[citation needed]}

When testing resumed in 1961, and continued for three decades, there was sufficient time to make all warhead designs inherently one-point safe, without need for mechanical safing.^{[citation needed]}

Wire safety method

In the last test before the 1958 moratorium the W47 warhead for the Polaris SLBM was found to not be one-point safe, producing an unacceptably high nuclear yield of 200 kg (440 lb) of TNT equivalent (Hardtack II Titania). With the test moratorium in force, there was no way to refine the design and make it inherently one-point safe. A solution was devised consisting of a boron-coated wire inserted into the weapon's hollow pit at manufacture. The warhead was armed by withdrawing the wire onto a spool driven by an electric motor. Once withdrawn, the wire could not be re-inserted.^[80] The wire had a tendency to become brittle during storage, and break or get stuck during arming, preventing complete removal and rendering the warhead a dud.^[81] It was estimated that 50–75% of warheads would fail. This required a complete rebuild of all W47 primaries.^[82] The oil used for lubricating the wire also promoted corrosion of the pit.^[83]

Strong link/weak link

Under the strong link/weak link system, "weak links" are constructed between critical nuclear weapon components (the "hard links"). In the event of an accident the weak links are designed to fail first in a manner that precludes energy transfer between them. Then, if a hard link fails in a manner that transfers or releases energy, energy can't be transferred into other weapon systems, potentially starting a nuclear detonation. Hard links are usually critical weapon components that have been hardened to survive extreme environments, while weak links can be both components deliberately inserted into the system to act as a weak link and critical nuclear components that can fail predictably.^{[citation needed]}

An example of a weak link would be an electrical connector that contains electrical wires made from a low melting point alloy. During a fire, those wires would melt, breaking any electrical connection.^{[citation needed]}

Permissive action link

A permissive action link is an access control device designed to prevent unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. Early PALs were simple electromechanical switches and have evolved into complex arming systems that include integrated yield control options, lockout devices and anti-tamper devices.^{[citation needed]}