There are many different political clubs in the world. Big, now already, seven, G20, BRICS, SCO, NATO, European Union, to some extent. However, none of these clubs can boast a unique function - the ability to destroy the world as we know it. The "nuclear club" possesses similar possibilities.

To date, there are 9 countries with nuclear weapons:

• Russia;
• Great Britain;
• France;
• India
• Pakistan;
• Israel;
• DPRK.

Countries are lined up as they appear in their arsenal nuclear weapons. If the list were built by the number of warheads, then Russia would be in first place with its 8,000 units, 1,600 of which can be launched right now. The states are only 700 units behind, but "at hand" they have 320 more charges. "Nuclear club" is a purely conditional concept, in fact there is no club. There are a number of agreements between the countries on non-proliferation and the reduction of stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The first tests of the atomic bomb, as you know, were carried out by the United States back in 1945. This weapon was tested in the "field" conditions of the Second World War on the inhabitants of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They operate on the principle of division. During the explosion, a chain reaction is started, which provokes the fission of the nuclei into two, with the accompanying release of energy. Uranium and plutonium are mainly used for this reaction. It is with these elements that our ideas about what nuclear bombs are made of are connected. Since uranium occurs in nature only as a mixture of three isotopes, of which only one is capable of supporting such a reaction, it is necessary to enrich uranium. The alternative is plutonium-239, which does not occur naturally and must be produced from uranium.

If a fission reaction takes place in a uranium bomb, then a fusion reaction occurs in a hydrogen bomb - this is the essence of how a hydrogen bomb differs from an atomic bomb. We all know that the sun gives us light, warmth, and one might say life. The same processes that take place in the sun can easily destroy cities and countries. The explosion of a hydrogen bomb was born by the fusion reaction of light nuclei, the so-called thermonuclear fusion. This "miracle" is possible thanks to hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium. That is why the bomb is called a hydrogen bomb. You can also see the title thermonuclear bomb”, by the reaction that underlies this weapon.

After the world has seen destructive force nuclear weapons, in August 1945, the USSR began a race that lasted until the moment of its collapse. The United States was the first to create, test and use nuclear weapons, the first to detonate a hydrogen bomb, but the USSR can be credited with the first production of a compact hydrogen bomb that can be delivered to the enemy on a conventional Tu-16. The first US bomb was the size of a three-story house, a hydrogen bomb of this size is of little use. The Soviets received such weapons as early as 1952, while the first "adequate" US bomb was adopted only in 1954. If you look back and analyze the explosions in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, you can conclude that they were not so powerful. . Two bombs in total destroyed both cities and killed, according to various sources, up to 220,000 people. Carpet bombing Tokyo in a day could take the lives of 150-200,000 people without any nuclear weapons. This is due to the low power of the first bombs - only a few tens of kilotons of TNT. Hydrogen bombs were tested with an eye to overcoming 1 megaton or more.

The first Soviet bomb was tested with a claim of 3 Mt, but in the end 1.6 Mt was tested.

The most powerful hydrogen bomb was tested by the Soviets in 1961. Its capacity reached 58-75 Mt, while the declared 51 Mt. "Tsar" plunged the world into a slight shock, in the literal sense. The shock wave circled the planet three times. There was not a single hill left at the test site (Novaya Zemlya), the explosion was heard at a distance of 800 km. The fireball reached a diameter of almost 5 km, the “mushroom” grew by 67 km, and the diameter of its cap was almost 100 km. The consequences of such an explosion in a large city are hard to imagine. According to many experts, it was the test of a hydrogen bomb of such power (the States had four times less bombs at that time) that was the first step towards signing various treaties to ban nuclear weapons, test them and reduce production. The world for the first time thought about its own security, which was really under threat.

As mentioned earlier, the principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb is based on a fusion reaction. Thermonuclear fusion is the process of fusion of two nuclei into one, with the formation of a third element, the release of a fourth and energy. The forces that repel the nuclei are colossal, so for the atoms to get close enough to merge, the temperature must be simply enormous. Scientists have been puzzling over cold thermonuclear fusion for centuries, trying to bring the fusion temperature down to room temperature, ideally. In this case, humanity will have access to the energy of the future. As for the fusion reaction at the present time, to start it you still need to light a miniature sun here on Earth - usually bombs use a uranium or plutonium charge to start the fusion.

In addition to the consequences described above from the use of a bomb of tens of megatons, a hydrogen bomb, like any nuclear weapon, has a number of consequences from its use. Some people tend to think that the hydrogen bomb is a "cleaner weapon" than a conventional bomb. Perhaps it has something to do with the name. People hear the word "water" and think that it has something to do with water and hydrogen, and therefore the consequences are not so dire. In fact, this is certainly not the case, because the action of the hydrogen bomb is based on extremely radioactive substances. It is theoretically possible to make a bomb without a uranium charge, but this is impractical due to the complexity of the process, so the pure fusion reaction is "diluted" with uranium to increase power. At the same time, the amount of radioactive fallout grows to 1000%. Everything that enters the fireball will be destroyed, the zone in the radius of destruction will become uninhabitable for people for decades. Radioactive fallout can harm people's health hundreds and thousands of kilometers away. Specific figures, the area of ​​infection can be calculated, knowing the strength of the charge.

However, the destruction of cities is not the worst thing that can happen “thanks to” weapons. mass destruction. After nuclear war the world will not be completely destroyed. Thousands of large cities, billions of people will remain on the planet, and only a small percentage of territories will lose their status as “livable”. In the long term, the whole world will be at risk due to the so-called "nuclear winter". Undermining the nuclear arsenal of the "club" can provoke the release into the atmosphere of a sufficient amount of matter (dust, soot, smoke) to "diminish" the brightness of the sun. A veil that can spread across the planet will destroy crops for several years to come, provoking famine and inevitable population decline. There has already been a “year without a summer” in history, after a major volcanic eruption in 1816, so a nuclear winter looks more than real. Again, depending on how the war will proceed, we can get the following types global change climate:

• cooling by 1 degree, will pass unnoticed;
• nuclear autumn - cooling by 2-4 degrees, crop failures and increased formation of hurricanes are possible;
• an analogue of "a year without summer" - when the temperature dropped significantly, by several degrees per year;
• the little ice age - the temperature can drop by 30 - 40 degrees for a considerable time, will be accompanied by depopulation of a number of northern zones and crop failures;
• ice age - the development of the Little Ice Age, when the reflection sun rays from the surface it can reach a certain critical level and the temperature will continue to fall, the difference is only in temperature;
• irreversible cooling is a very sad version of the ice age, which, under the influence of many factors, will turn the Earth into a new planet.

The nuclear winter theory is constantly being criticized, and its implications seem a little overblown. However, one should not doubt its imminent offensive in any global conflict with the use of hydrogen bombs.

The Cold War is long over, and therefore, nuclear hysteria can only be seen in old Hollywood films and on the covers of rare magazines and comics. Despite this, we may be on the verge of a serious nuclear conflict, if not a big one. All this thanks to the lover of rockets and the hero of the fight against the imperialist habits of the United States - Kim Jong-un. The DPRK hydrogen bomb is still a hypothetical object, only circumstantial evidence speaks of its existence. Of course the government North Korea constantly reports that they managed to make new bombs, so far no one has seen them live. Naturally, the States and their allies, Japan and South Korea, are a little more concerned about the presence, even if hypothetical, of such weapons in the DPRK. The reality is that the this moment North Korea does not have enough technology to successfully attack the United States, which they announce to the whole world every year. Even an attack on neighboring Japan or the South may not be very successful, if at all, but every year the danger of a new conflict on the Korean peninsula is growing.

thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb)- a type of nuclear weapon, the destructive power of which is based on the use of the energy of the reaction of nuclear fusion of light elements into heavier ones (for example, the fusion of one nucleus of a helium atom from two nuclei of deuterium atoms), in which energy is released.

general description [ | ]

A thermonuclear explosive device can be built using both liquid deuterium and gaseous compressed. But the advent of thermonuclear weapons was made possible only by a variety of lithium hydride, lithium-6 deuteride. This is a compound of the heavy isotope of hydrogen - deuterium and the isotope of lithium with a mass number of 6.

Lithium-6 deuteride is a solid that allows storage of deuterium ( normal state which under normal conditions is a gas) under normal conditions, and, in addition, its second component, lithium-6, is a raw material for obtaining the most scarce hydrogen isotope, tritium. Actually, 6 Li is the only industrial source of tritium:

3 6 L i + 0 1 n → 1 3 H + 2 4 H e + E 1 . (\displaystyle ()_(3)^(6)\mathrm (Li) +()_(0)^(1)n\to ()_(1)^(3)\mathrm (H) +() _(2)^(4)\mathrm (He) +E_(1).)

The same reaction occurs in lithium-6 deuteride in a thermonuclear device when irradiated with fast neutrons; released energy E 1 = 4.784 MeV. The resulting tritium (3 H) then reacts with deuterium, releasing energy E 2 = 17.59 MeV:

1 3 H + 1 2 H → 2 4 H e + 0 1 n + E 2 , (\displaystyle ()_(1)^(3)\mathrm (H) +()_(1)^(2)\ mathrm (H) \to ()_(2)^(4)\mathrm (He) +()_(0)^(1)n+E_(2),)

moreover, a neutron with a kinetic energy of at least 14.1 MeV is formed, which can again initiate the first reaction on another lithium-6 nucleus, or cause fission of heavy uranium or plutonium nuclei in a shell or trigger with the emission of several more fast neutrons.

Early US thermonuclear munitions also used natural lithium deuteride, containing mainly an isotope of lithium with a mass number of 7. It also serves as a source of tritium, but for this, the neutrons participating in the reaction must have an energy of 10 MeV and higher: the reaction n+ 7 Li → 3 H + 4 He + n− 2.467 MeV is endothermic, absorbing energy.

A thermonuclear bomb, operating according to the Teller-Ulam principle, consists of two stages: a trigger and a container with thermonuclear fuel.

The device tested by the United States in 1952 was not actually a bomb, but was a laboratory sample, a "3-story house filled with liquid deuterium", made in the form special design. Soviet scientists have developed precisely the bomb - a complete device suitable for practical military use.

The largest ever detonated hydrogen bomb is the Soviet 58-megaton "Tsar bomb", detonated on October 30, 1961 at the test site of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Nikita Khrushchev subsequently publicly joked that the 100-megaton bomb was originally supposed to be detonated, but the charge was reduced "so as not to break all the windows in Moscow." Structurally, the bomb was indeed designed for 100 megatons, and this power could be achieved by replacing lead with uranium. The bomb was detonated at an altitude of 4,000 meters above the Novaya Zemlya test site. The shock wave after the explosion circled the globe three times. Despite a successful test, the bomb did not enter service; nevertheless, the creation and testing of the superbomb had a great political significance, demonstrating that the USSR had solved the problem of achieving virtually any level of nuclear arsenal megatonnage.

USA [ | ]

The idea of ​​a fusion bomb initiated by an atomic charge was proposed by Enrico Fermi to his colleague Edward Teller in the autumn of 1941, at the very beginning of the Manhattan Project. Teller spent much of his work on the Manhattan Project working on the fusion bomb project, to some extent neglecting the atomic bomb itself. His focus on difficulties and his "devil's advocate" position in discussions of problems caused Oppenheimer to lead Teller and other "problem" physicists to a siding.

The first important and conceptual steps towards the implementation of the synthesis project were taken by Teller's collaborator Stanislav Ulam. To initiate thermonuclear fusion, Ulam proposed to compress the thermonuclear fuel before it starts heating, using the factors of the primary fission reaction for this, and also to place the thermonuclear charge separately from the primary nuclear component of the bomb. These proposals made it possible to translate the development of thermonuclear weapons into a practical plane. Based on this, Teller suggested that the X-ray and gamma radiation generated by the primary explosion could transfer enough energy to the secondary component, located in a common shell with the primary, to carry out sufficient implosion (compression) and initiate thermal nuclear reaction. Later, Teller, his supporters and detractors discussed Ulam's contribution to the theory behind this mechanism.

Explosion "George"

In 1951, a series of tests was carried out under the general name Operation "Greenhouse" (English Operation Greenhouse), during which the issues of miniaturization of nuclear charges were worked out with an increase in their power. One of the tests in this series was an explosion codenamed "George" (eng. George), in which an experimental device was blown up, which was a nuclear charge in the form of a torus with a small amount of liquid hydrogen placed in the center. The main part of the explosion power was obtained precisely due to hydrogen fusion, which confirmed in practice the general concept of two-stage devices.

"Evie Mike"

Soon the development of thermonuclear weapons in the United States was directed towards the miniaturization of the Teller-Ulam design, which could be equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs/ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs/SLBMs). By 1960, the W47 megaton-class warheads deployed on submarines equipped with ballistic missiles Polaris. The warheads had a mass of 320 kg and a diameter of 50 cm. Later tests showed the low reliability of the warheads installed on the Polaris missiles, and the need for their improvements. By the mid-1970s, the miniaturization of new versions of the Teller-Ulam warheads made it possible to place 10 or more warheads in the dimensions of the warhead of multiple reentry vehicle (MIRV) missiles.

USSR [ | ]

North Korea [ | ]

In December of the year, the KCNA released a statement by the leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un, in which he reports that Pyongyang has its own hydrogen bomb.

HYDROGEN BOMB, a weapon of great destructive power (of the order of megatons in TNT equivalent), the principle of operation of which is based on the thermonuclear fusion reaction of light nuclei. The energy source of the explosion are processes similar to those occurring on the Sun and other stars.

In 1961, the most powerful explosion of the hydrogen bomb took place.

On the morning of October 30 at 11:32 a.m. a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons of TNT was detonated over Novaya Zemlya in the area of ​​Mityushi Bay at an altitude of 4000 m above the land surface.

Soviet Union conducted a test of the most powerful thermonuclear device in history. Even in the "half" version (and the maximum power of such a bomb is 100 megatons), the energy of the explosion was ten times higher than the total power of all explosives used by all the warring parties during the Second World War (including the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The shock wave from the explosion circled the globe three times, the first time in 36 hours and 27 minutes.

The light flash was so bright that, despite the continuous cloudiness, it was visible even from the command post in the village of Belushya Guba (almost 200 km away from the epicenter of the explosion). The mushroom cloud rose to a height of 67 km. By the time of the explosion, while the bomb was slowly descending on a huge parachute from a height of 10500 to the estimated point of detonation, the Tu-95 carrier aircraft with the crew and its commander, Major Andrei Egorovich Durnovtsev, was already in the safe zone. The commander returned to his airfield as a lieutenant colonel, Hero of the Soviet Union. In an abandoned village - 400 km from the epicenter - were destroyed wooden houses, and the stone ones lost their roofs, windows and doors. For many hundreds of kilometers from the test site, as a result of the explosion, the conditions for the passage of radio waves changed for almost an hour, and radio communications ceased.

The bomb was designed by V.B. Adamsky, Yu.N. Smirnov, A.D. Sakharov, Yu.N. Babaev and Yu.A. Trutnev (for which Sakharov was awarded the third medal of the Hero Socialist Labor). The mass of the "device" was 26 tons; a specially modified Tu-95 strategic bomber was used to transport and drop it.

The "superbomb", as A. Sakharov called it, did not fit in the aircraft's bomb bay (its length was 8 meters and its diameter was about 2 meters), so the non-forced part of the fuselage was cut out and a special one was mounted lifting mechanism and a device for attaching a bomb; while in flight, it still sticks out more than half. The entire body of the aircraft, even the blades of its propellers, was covered with a special white paint that protects against a flash of light during an explosion. The body of the accompanying laboratory aircraft was covered with the same paint.

The results of the explosion of the charge, which received the name "Tsar Bomba" in the West, were impressive:

* The nuclear "mushroom" of the explosion rose to a height of 64 km; the diameter of its cap reached 40 kilometers.

The burst fireball hit the ground and almost reached the height of the bomb release (that is, the radius fireball explosion was about 4.5 kilometers away).

* The radiation caused third-degree burns at a distance of up to one hundred kilometers.

* At the peak of the emission of radiation, the explosion reached a power of 1% of the solar one.

* The shock wave resulting from the explosion circled the globe three times.

* Atmospheric ionization has caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the test site for one hour.

* Witnesses felt the impact and were able to describe the explosion at a distance of a thousand kilometers from the epicenter. Also, the shock wave to some extent retained its destructive power at a distance of thousands of kilometers from the epicenter.

* The acoustic wave reached the island of Dixon, where the blast wave knocked out the windows in the houses.

The political result of this test was the demonstration by the Soviet Union of possession of an unlimited power weapon of mass destruction - the maximum megatonnage of a bomb from the United States tested by that time was four times less than that of the Tsar Bomba. Indeed, an increase in the power of a hydrogen bomb is achieved by simply increasing the mass of the working material, so that, in principle, there are no factors preventing the creation of a 100-megaton or 500-megaton hydrogen bomb. (In fact, the Tsar Bomba was designed for a 100-megaton equivalent; the planned explosion power was cut in half, according to Khrushchev, "So as not to break all the glass in Moscow"). With this test, the Soviet Union demonstrated the ability to create a hydrogen bomb of any power and a means of delivering the bomb to the detonation point.

thermonuclear reactions. The interior of the Sun contains a gigantic amount of hydrogen, which is in a state of superhigh compression at a temperature of approx. 15,000,000 K. At such a high temperature and plasma density, hydrogen nuclei experience constant collisions with each other, some of which end in their merger and, ultimately, the formation of heavier helium nuclei. Such reactions, called thermonuclear fusion, are accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy. According to the laws of physics, the energy release during thermonuclear fusion is due to the fact that when a heavier nucleus is formed, part of the mass of the light nuclei included in its composition is converted into a colossal amount of energy. That is why the Sun, having a gigantic mass, loses approx. 100 billion tons of matter and releases energy, thanks to which life on Earth became possible.

Isotopes of hydrogen. The hydrogen atom is the simplest of all existing atoms. It consists of one proton, which is its nucleus, around which a single electron revolves. Careful studies of water (H 2 O) have shown that it contains negligible amounts of "heavy" water containing the "heavy isotope" of hydrogen - deuterium (2 H). The deuterium nucleus consists of a proton and a neutron, a neutral particle with a mass close to that of a proton.

There is a third isotope of hydrogen, tritium, which contains one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus. Tritium is unstable and undergoes spontaneous radioactive decay, turning into an isotope of helium. Traces of tritium have been found in the Earth's atmosphere, where it is formed as a result of the interaction of cosmic rays with gas molecules that make up the air. Tritium is obtained artificially in nuclear reactor, irradiating the lithium-6 isotope with a neutron flux.

Development of the hydrogen bomb. A preliminary theoretical analysis showed that thermonuclear fusion is most easily carried out in a mixture of deuterium and tritium. Taking this as a basis, US scientists in the early 1950s began to implement a project to create a hydrogen bomb (HB). The first tests of a model nuclear device were carried out at the Eniwetok test site in the spring of 1951; thermonuclear fusion was only partial. Significant success was achieved on November 1, 1951, when testing a massive nuclear device, the explosion power of which was 4? 8 Mt in TNT equivalent.

The first hydrogen aerial bomb was detonated in the USSR on August 12, 1953, and on March 1, 1954, the Americans detonated a more powerful (about 15 Mt) aerial bomb on Bikini Atoll. Since then, both powers have been detonating advanced megaton weapons.

The explosion on the Bikini Atoll was accompanied by the release of a large amount of radioactive substances. Some of them fell hundreds of kilometers from the site of the explosion onto the Japanese fishing vessel Lucky Dragon, while others covered the island of Rongelap. Since thermonuclear fusion produces stable helium, the radioactivity in the explosion of a purely hydrogen bomb should be no more than that of an atomic detonator of a thermonuclear reaction. However, in the case under consideration, the predicted and actual radioactive fallout differed significantly in quantity and composition.

The mechanism of action of the hydrogen bomb. The sequence of processes occurring during the explosion of a hydrogen bomb can be represented as follows. First, the thermonuclear reaction initiator charge (a small atomic bomb) inside the HB shell explodes, resulting in a neutron flash and creating the high temperature necessary to initiate thermonuclear fusion. Neutrons bombard an insert made of lithium deuteride - a compound of deuterium with lithium (a lithium isotope with a mass number of 6 is used). Lithium-6 is split by neutrons into helium and tritium. Thus, the atomic fuse creates the materials necessary for synthesis directly in the bomb itself.

Then a thermonuclear reaction begins in a mixture of deuterium and tritium, the temperature inside the bomb rises rapidly, involving more and more hydrogen in the fusion. With a further increase in temperature, a reaction between deuterium nuclei could begin, which is characteristic of a purely hydrogen bomb. All reactions, of course, proceed so quickly that they are perceived as instantaneous.

Division, synthesis, division (superbomb). In fact, in the bomb, the sequence of processes described above ends at the stage of the reaction of deuterium with tritium. Further, the bomb designers preferred to use not the fusion of nuclei, but their fission. As a result of the fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei, helium and fast neutrons are formed, the energy of which is large enough to cause fission of the nuclei of uranium-238 (the main isotope of uranium, much cheaper than the uranium-235 used in conventional atomic bombs Oh). Fast neutrons split the atoms of the superbomb's uranium shell. The fission of one ton of uranium creates an energy equivalent to 18 Mt. Energy goes not only to the explosion and the release of heat. Each uranium nucleus is split into two highly radioactive "fragments". Fission products include 36 different chemical elements and almost 200 radioactive isotopes. All this makes up the radioactive fallout that accompanies the explosions of superbombs.

Due to the unique design and the described mechanism of action, weapons of this type can be made as powerful as desired. It is much cheaper than atomic bombs of the same power.

60 years ago, on March 1, 1954, the United States detonated a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. The power of this explosion was equivalent to the explosion of a thousand bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the most powerful test ever made in the United States. The estimated yield of the bomb was 15 megatons. Subsequently, in the United States, increasing the explosive power of such bombs was recognized as inappropriate.

As a result of the test, about 100 million tons of contaminated soil got into the atmosphere. People also suffered. The US military did not delay the test, knowing that the wind was blowing towards the inhabited islands and that fishermen could suffer. The islanders and fishermen were not even warned about the tests and possible danger.

Thus, the Japanese fishing vessel "Happy Dragon" ("Fukuryu-Maru"), which was located 140 km from the epicenter of the explosion, was exposed to radiation, 23 people were injured (later 12 of them died). More than 800 Japanese fishing boats have been contaminated to varying degrees as a result of the Castle Bravo test, according to the Japanese Ministry of Health. There were about 20 thousand people on them. Residents of the Rongelap and Ailinginae atolls received serious doses of radiation. Some American soldiers were also injured.

The world community expressed its concern about the powerful shock war and radioactive fallout. Several eminent scientists, including Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Frederic Joliot-Curie, protested. In 1957, the first conference of the scientific movement was held in the Canadian town of Pugwash, the purpose of which was to ban nuclear tests, reduce the risk of armed conflicts and jointly search for solutions to global problems (the Pugwash Movement).

From the history of the creation of the hydrogen bomb in the United States

The idea of ​​a fusion bomb initiated by an atomic charge was put forward as early as 1941. In May 1941, physicist Tokutaro Hagiwara from the University of Kyoto in Japan suggested the possibility of initiating a thermonuclear reaction between hydrogen nuclei using an explosive chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 nuclei. A similar idea was expressed in September 1941 at Columbia University by the eminent Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. He presented it to his colleague American physicist Edward Teller. Then Fermi and Teller expressed the idea of ​​the possibility of initiating thermonuclear reactions in a deuterium medium by a nuclear explosion. Teller was on fire with this idea and during the implementation of the Manhattan Project he devoted most of his time to work on the creation of a thermonuclear bomb.

I must say that he was a real "militarist" scientist who advocated for ensuring the US advantage in the field of nuclear weapons. The scientist was against the ban on nuclear tests in three environments, he proposed to carry out new work to create cheaper and effective types atomic . He advocated the deployment of weapons in space.

A group of brilliant scientists from the United States and Europe, who worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory, in the course of working on the creation of nuclear weapons, also touched upon the problems of the deuterium superbomb. By the end of 1945, a relatively coherent concept of the "classic super" was created. It was believed that the flow of neutrons emerging from the primary atomic bomb based on uranium-235 could cause a detonation in a cylinder with liquid deuterium (through an intermediate chamber with a DT mixture). Emil Konopinsky suggested adding tritium to deuterium to reduce the ignition temperature. In 1946, Klaus Fuchs, with the participation of John Von Neumann, proposed the use of a new initiation system. It included an additional secondary unit of a liquid DT mixture, which was ignited as a result of radiation from the primary atomic bomb.

Teller's colleague, Polish mathematician Stanisław Ulam, made proposals that made it possible to translate the development of a thermonuclear bomb into a practical plane. So, to initiate thermonuclear fusion, he proposed to compress thermonuclear fuel before it starts heating, using the primary fission reaction for this and placing the thermonuclear charge separately from the primary nuclear component. From these calculations, Teller hypothesized that the X-rays and gamma rays produced by the primary explosion would be able to transfer enough energy to the secondary to initiate a fusion reaction.

In January 1950, US President Harry Truman announced that the United States would work on all types of atomic weapons, including the hydrogen bomb ("superbomb"). It was decided to conduct the first ground tests with thermonuclear reactions in 1951. So, they planned to test the "reinforced" atomic bomb "Point", as well as the model of the "classic super" with a binary initiating compartment. This test was called "George" (the device itself was called "Cylinder"). During the preparation of the George test, the classical principle of designing a thermonuclear device was used, where the energy of the primary atomic bomb is retained and used to compress and initiate the second component with thermonuclear fuel.

On May 9, 1951, the George test was carried out. The first small thermonuclear flame flared up on Earth. In 1952, the construction of a plant for the production of lithium-6 began. In 1953, production was launched.

In September 1951, Los Alamos decided to develop the Mike thermonuclear device. On November 1, 1952, a thermonuclear explosive device was tested on Eniwetok Atoll. The power of the explosion was estimated at 10-12 megatons of TNT equivalent. Liquid deuterium was used as fuel for thermonuclear fusion. The idea of ​​a two-stage device with a Teller-Ulam configuration paid off. The device consisted of a conventional nuclear charge and a cryogenic tank with a mixture of liquid deuterium and tritium. The "spark plug" for the thermonuclear reaction was a plutonium rod, which was located in the center of the cryogenic tank. The test was successful.

However, there was a problem - the super-bomb was designed in a non-transportable version. The total weight of the structure was more than 70 tons. It could not be used during the war. The main task was the creation of transportable thermonuclear weapons. To do this, it was necessary to accumulate a sufficient amount of lithium-6. A sufficient amount was accumulated by the spring of 1954.

On March 1, 1954, the Americans conducted a new thermonuclear test, Castle Bravo, at Bikini Atoll. Lithium deuteride was used as a thermonuclear fuel. It was a two-stage charge: an initiating atomic charge and thermonuclear fuel. The test was declared successful. Although they made a mistake in the power of the explosion. He was much more powerful than expected.

Further tests made it possible to improve the thermonuclear charge. On May 21, 1956, the first bomb was dropped from an aircraft. The mass of the charge was reduced, which made it possible to reduce the bomb. Already by 1960, the United States was able to create megaton-class warheads, which they deployed on nuclear submarines.

August 21st, 2015

The Tsar Bomba is the nickname for the AN602 hydrogen bomb, which was tested in the Soviet Union in 1961. This bomb was the most powerful ever detonated. Its power was such that the flash from the explosion was visible for 1000 km, and the nuclear mushroom rose almost 70 km.

The Tsar bomb was a hydrogen bomb. It was created in Kurchatov's laboratory. The power of the bomb was such that it would be enough for 3800 Hiroshima.

Let's take a look at its history...

At the beginning of the "atomic age", the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a race not only in the number of atomic bombs, but also in their power.

the USSR, which acquired atomic weapons later than a competitor, he sought to even out the situation by creating more advanced and more powerful devices.

The development of a thermonuclear device codenamed "Ivan" was started in the mid-1950s by a group of physicists led by academician Kurchatov. The group involved in this project included Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunov and Yuri Smirnov.

During research work scientists also tried to find the limits of the maximum power of a thermonuclear explosive device.

The theoretical possibility of obtaining energy by thermonuclear fusion was known even before the Second World War, but it was the war and the subsequent arms race that raised the question of creating technical device for the practical creation of this reaction. It is known that in Germany in 1944, work was underway to initiate thermonuclear fusion by compressing nuclear fuel using charges of conventional explosives - but they were unsuccessful, because they could not obtain the necessary temperatures and pressures. The USA and the USSR have been developing thermonuclear weapons since the 1940s, having tested the first thermonuclear devices almost simultaneously in the early 1950s. In 1952, on the Enewetok Atoll, the United States carried out an explosion of a charge with a capacity of 10.4 megatons (which is 450 times the power of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki), and in 1953 a device with a capacity of 400 kilotons was tested in the USSR.

The designs of the first thermonuclear devices were ill-suited for real combat use. For example, a device tested by the United States in 1952 was an above-ground structure as high as a 2-story building and weighing over 80 tons. Liquid thermonuclear fuel was stored in it with the help of a huge refrigeration unit. Therefore, in the future, the mass production of thermonuclear weapons was carried out using solid fuel - lithium-6 deuteride. In 1954, the United States tested a device based on it at Bikini Atoll, and in 1955, a new Soviet thermonuclear bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. In 1957, a hydrogen bomb was tested in the UK.

Design studies lasted for several years, and the final stage of development of the "product 602" fell on 1961 and took 112 days.

The AN602 bomb had a three-stage design: the nuclear charge of the first stage (the estimated contribution to the explosion power is 1.5 megatons) triggered a thermonuclear reaction in the second stage (the contribution to the explosion power is 50 megatons), and it, in turn, initiated the so-called nuclear " the Jekyll-Hyde reaction (fission of nuclei in blocks of uranium-238 under the action of fast neutrons produced as a result of a thermonuclear fusion reaction) in the third stage (another 50 megatons of power), so that the total estimated power of AN602 was 101.5 megatons.

However, the original version was rejected, since in this form the bomb explosion would have caused extremely powerful radiation pollution (which, however, according to calculations, would still be seriously inferior to that caused by much less powerful American devices).
In the end, it was decided not to use the "Jekyll-Hyde reaction" in the third stage of the bomb and replace the uranium components with their lead equivalent. This reduced the estimated total explosion power by almost half (to 51.5 megatons).

Another limitation for developers was the capabilities of aircraft. The first version of a bomb weighing 40 tons was rejected by aircraft designers from the Tupolev Design Bureau - the carrier aircraft could not deliver such a load to the target.

As a result, the parties reached a compromise - nuclear scientists reduced the weight of the bomb by half, and aviation designers prepared for it a special modification of the Tu-95 bomber - Tu-95V.

It turned out that it would not be possible to place a charge in the bomb bay under any circumstances, so the Tu-95V had to carry the AN602 to the target on a special external sling.

In fact, the carrier aircraft was ready in 1959, but the nuclear physicists were instructed not to force work on the bomb - just at that moment there were signs of a decrease in tension in international relations in the world.

In early 1961, however, the situation escalated again, and the project was revived.

The final weight of the bomb, together with the parachute system, was 26.5 tons. The product turned out to have several names at once - "Big Ivan", "Tsar Bomba" and "Kuzkin's mother". The latter stuck to the bomb after the speech of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the Americans, in which he promised them to show "Kuzkin's mother."

The fact that the Soviet Union plans to test a super-powerful thermonuclear charge in the near future was quite openly told by Khrushchev to foreign diplomats in 1961. On October 17, 1961, the Soviet leader announced the upcoming tests in a report at the XXII Party Congress.

The test site was the Dry Nose test site on Novaya Zemlya. Preparations for the explosion were completed in last days October 1961.

The Tu-95V carrier aircraft was based at the airfield in Vaenga. Here, in a special room, final preparation to trials.

On the morning of October 30, 1961, the crew of pilot Andrei Durnovtsev received an order to fly to the area of ​​​​the test site and drop the bomb.

Taking off from the airfield in Vaenga, the Tu-95V reached the calculated point two hours later. A bomb on a parachute system was dropped from a height of 10,500 meters, after which the pilots immediately began to withdraw the car from the dangerous area.

At 11:33 Moscow time, an explosion was made above the target at an altitude of 4 km.

The power of the explosion significantly exceeded the calculated one (51.5 megatons) and ranged from 57 to 58.6 megatons in TNT equivalent.

Operating principle:

The action of a hydrogen bomb is based on the use of energy released during the reaction of thermonuclear fusion of light nuclei. It is this reaction that takes place in the interiors of stars, where, under the influence of ultrahigh temperatures and gigantic pressure, hydrogen nuclei collide and merge into heavier helium nuclei. During the reaction, part of the mass of hydrogen nuclei is converted into a large number of energy - thanks to this, stars emit a huge amount of energy constantly. Scientists copied this reaction using hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium, which gave the name "hydrogen bomb". Initially, liquid isotopes of hydrogen were used to produce charges, and later lithium-6 deuteride, a solid compound of deuterium and an isotope of lithium, was used.

Lithium-6 deuteride is the main component of the hydrogen bomb, thermonuclear fuel. It already stores deuterium, and the lithium isotope serves as a raw material for the formation of tritium. To start a thermonuclear fusion reaction, you need to create high temperature and pressure, as well as isolate tritium from lithium-6. These conditions are provided as follows.

The shell of the container for thermonuclear fuel is made of uranium-238 and plastic, next to the container is placed a conventional nuclear charge with a capacity of several kilotons - it is called a trigger, or a charge-initiator of a hydrogen bomb. During the explosion of the initiator plutonium charge, under the action of powerful X-ray radiation, the container shell turns into plasma, shrinking thousands of times, which creates the necessary high pressure and great temperature. At the same time, neutrons emitted by plutonium interact with lithium-6, forming tritium. The nuclei of deuterium and tritium interact under the influence of ultra-high temperature and pressure, which leads to a thermonuclear explosion.

If you make several layers of uranium-238 and lithium-6 deuteride, then each of them will add its power to the bomb explosion - that is, such a "puff" allows you to increase the power of the explosion almost unlimitedly. Thanks to this, a hydrogen bomb can be made of almost any power, and it will be much cheaper than a conventional nuclear bomb of the same power.

Witnesses of the test say that they have never seen anything like it in their lives. The nuclear mushroom explosion rose to a height of 67 kilometers, light radiation could potentially cause third-degree burns at a distance of up to 100 kilometers.

Observers reported that at the epicenter of the explosion, the rocks took on a surprisingly even shape, and the earth turned into a kind of military parade ground. Complete destruction was achieved on an area equal to the territory of Paris.

Atmospheric ionization caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the test site for about 40 minutes. The lack of radio communication convinced the scientists that the tests went well. The shock wave resulting from the explosion of the Tsar Bomba circled the globe three times. The sound wave generated by the explosion reached Dixon Island at a distance of about 800 kilometers.

Despite heavy cloud cover, witnesses saw the explosion even at a distance of thousands of kilometers and could describe it.

The radioactive contamination from the explosion turned out to be minimal, as the developers had planned - more than 97% of the explosion power was produced by a thermonuclear fusion reaction that practically did not create radioactive contamination.

This allowed scientists to start studying the test results on the experimental field two hours after the explosion.

The explosion of the Tsar Bomba really made an impression on the whole world. She was more powerful than the most powerful American bomb four times.

There was a theoretical possibility of creating even more powerful charges, but it was decided to abandon the implementation of such projects.

Oddly enough, the main skeptics were the military. From their point of view, such a weapon had no practical meaning. How would you order him to be delivered to the "enemy's lair"? The USSR already had missiles, but they could not fly to America with such a load.

Strategic bombers were also unable to fly to the United States with such a "luggage". In addition, they became an easy target for air defense systems.

Atomic scientists turned out to be much more enthusiastic. Plans were put forward to place several superbombs with a capacity of 200-500 megatons off the coast of the United States, the explosion of which was supposed to cause a giant tsunami that would literally wash America away.

Academician Andrei Sakharov, future human rights activist and laureate Nobel Prize peace, put forward another plan. “The carrier can be a large torpedo launched from a submarine. I fantasized that it was possible to develop for such a torpedo a direct-flow water-steam atomic jet engine. The target of an attack from a distance of several hundred kilometers should be the ports of the enemy. The war at sea is lost if the ports are destroyed, the sailors assure us of this. The body of such a torpedo can be very durable, it will not be afraid of mines and obstacle nets. Of course, the destruction of ports - both by a surface explosion of a torpedo with a 100-megaton charge that “jumped out” of the water, and an underwater explosion - is inevitably associated with very large human casualties, ”the scientist wrote in his memoirs.

Sakharov told Vice Admiral Pyotr Fomin about his idea. An experienced sailor, who headed the "atomic department" under the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, was horrified by the scientist's plan, calling the project "cannibalistic". According to Sakharov, he was ashamed and never returned to this idea.

Scientists and the military received generous awards for the successful testing of the Tsar Bomba, but the very idea of ​​super-powerful thermonuclear charges began to become a thing of the past.

The designers of nuclear weapons focused on things less spectacular, but much more effective.

And the explosion of the "Tsar Bomba" to this day remains the most powerful of those that have ever been produced by mankind.

Tsar bomb in numbers:

• The weight: 27 tons
• Length: 8 meters
• Diameter: 2 meters
• Power: 55 megatons of TNT
• Mushroom Height: 67 km
• Mushroom base diameter: 40 km
• Fireball Diameter: 4.6 km
• Distance at which the explosion caused skin burns: 100 km
• Explosion Visibility Distance: 1 000 km
• The amount of TNT needed to match the power of the Tsar Bomb: a giant TNT cube with a side 312 meters (height of the Eiffel Tower)

sources

http://www.aif.ru/society/history/1371856

http://www.aif.ru/dontknows/infographics/kak_deystvuet_vodorodnaya_bomba_i_kakovy_posledstviya_vzryva_infografika

http://lllolll.ru/tsar-bomb

And a little more about the non-peaceful ATOM: for example, and here. But there was also such that there were still The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -