For that matter, even the Nagasaki bomb (“Fat Man”) didn’t use Uranium at all - its fuel was Plutonium.
Comment on logs are for quitters
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoThose are fission. Fusion bombs don’t fuse uranium. They use a fission bomb to fuse Lithium.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
frezik@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
Oh, they do, but not as the primary or secondary. You can wrap depleated uranium around the core to capture fast neutrons that are leftover from the rest of the process. Changing the number of layers is how you can dial in a desired yield.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Damnit, you’re right and I’m wrong!
anindefinitearticle@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Look at all these nuclear scientists on Lemmy.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Sorry I meant Lithium Deuteride.
6Li2H
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
I mean if we really want to be technically accurate here, the lithium is just a moderater for the hydrogen isotopes to fuse.
But for me it gets fuzzy when looking at the reaction.
LiD is 4 protons, 8 neutrons. Add a new neutron, and bam, you have 4 protons and 9 neutrons. But that’s where it gets weird to me. The lithium needs to decay or something into a tritium and dueterium which forces the tritium to fuse with the existing dueterium in the LiD molecule? Clearly the neutron has enough energy to transfer into one of the atoms to increase the chance of tunneling actually occuring.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The only real purpose of the lithium deuteride is that it’s a dry, shelf-stable, room-temperature fuel. The very first hydrogen “bomb” (actually a building-sized device) used supercooled liquid hydrogen as the fusion fuel, but this was obviously not practical for a deliverable bomb.
feannag@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
How about a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?