A nearly-unlimited H-Bomb yield is possible ?

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:25 am

Hi,
(sorry for my bad english Confused

)

the most powerful H- bomb design was 100 megatons (full yield of tzar bomb design of 1961, whith uranium tamper, weight of the device: +/- 25 tons)

In 1961, sakharov speak that the succès of the tzar bomb test open the door of a nearly-unlimited yield for a h-bomb

With the tremendous today progress in "nanotechnology" & "electronics"
if you knew today, a bomb design far more powerful is possible ?

For exemple, a device of 500 (or much more ?) megatons with a weight of 10/15 tons ? is possible ?

Rolling Eyes

Forum Admin Joined: Aug 06, 2006 Posts: 1631 Location: UK

As I understand the yield of a TN device in virtually unlimited, you just keep adding stages.

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 4:13 pm

sonicbomb wrote:

As I understand the yield of a TN device in virtually unlimited, you just keep adding stages.

A single device cannot be unlimited. The requirement for hydrodynamic compression to achieve thermonuclear bomb reaction is limited. Multiple fission triggering stages also limit this ability within a uniform compression mechanism fouled by more geometrical complexity of multiple devices within the casing of a Teller-Ulam thermonuclear device.

Generally the way around the fusion limitation for extra big blast was to pack alot of purified natural uranium around the TN device, to create a huge but highly inefficient fission-fusion-fission dirty bomb, triggered by fast neutrons created by the device. U238 does not spontaneously nor critically fission of course, but it will supercitically (explosively) fission under a huge flux of fast neutrons. This concept is how the Tsar Bomb proved a 100 MT design, by Sakharov leaving out the uranium liner, and using lead in place of it inside the device.

Forum Admin Joined: Aug 06, 2006 Posts: 1631 Location: UK

Thats what I meant, cheers for the precise definition though... Smile

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 6:45 pm

Excellent. Can I see an illustration of that? Smile

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:11 pm

Yeah... but imagine the amount of purified natural Uranium or U238, and other materials you would need to produce a 500 MT weapon. A 500 MT weapon would be usefull for destroying country's. Shocked

Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 7:27 pm

Advances in electronics and nanotechnology would only reduce the weapon’s firing systems which are already very light in weight and a reduction of these would make a neglible difference, the nuclear stages are way more important but the practical limit of efficiency is very close to 6 kt/kg, thus even a highly efficient 10 Ton device would yield 60 Megatons at most.

We should never confuse a fission- fusion -fission device (two stages), with a *TRUE* three stage weapon, where a thermonuclear secondary is the main driving force to implode a gigantic tertiary stage. The optional fissioning of the tamper on the secondary or later stages is not inefficient; if natural uranium is used, Fast Fission of the tamper provides the majority of the energy released in most thermonuclear weapon designs, and it is extremely efficient if HEU is used since the energy of the fission trigger exceeds that of a conventional explosive by six orders of magnitude making compression much more faster, this was Ulam’s basic idea to improve fission bombs that led to the invention of thermonuclear weapons, also there is the massive presence of fusion neutrons to accelerate the process, as an example virtually all of the fission spark plug in a secondary is gone after the thermonuclear reaction.

Making a weapon of hundreds or thousands of megatons is possible but regardless of the technology available it would be very heavy because of the physical properties of the nuclear materials, such a device was not built because it hasn’t been needed, not because it is not possible.

Remember that no more than 112 days elapsed from initial concept to the detonation of a three stage device developed by the Soviet Union
and every aspect of the development was rushed. The mathematical analysis normally conducted by the Soviet weapon scientists for a new thermonuclear weapon design was skipped, substituting estimates and approximations of various kinds and, IT WORKED!!!.

Of course there are problems with multi staged weapons, mainly preheating of the nuclear fuel and achieving compression of the fuel capsules at the desired rate, as a rough approximation, we can say that the amount of energy required to implode a secondary is proportional to its mass, efficient compression requires creating and maintaining a relatively low pressure for a relatively long time, with the pressure rise accelerating rapidly near the end of the compression process, but there are techniques that involve barriers between the stages that solve this and they were developed more than 40 years ago.

In weapons with more than two stages, the efficient compression of tertiary (or, in principal, later stages) can be conveniently arranged with the aid of the sequenced energy release of the earlier stages. Moreover the stages doesn’t have to come in a single piece, making later stages huge and difficult to build, Tsar for example was made of several fuel capsules that constitute the second stage (visible in photo), and several capsules, each with a yield of 10-20 Mt, constitute the third stage. There is no physical rule that prevents adding more stages as long as previous stages give the energy necessary e to compress the next one, a stage can give as much as 200 times more energy than the previous one, but more typically 10-50 times more.

Forum Admin Joined: Aug 06, 2006 Posts: 1631 Location: UK

Did you copy and paste this Teller?

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 2:10 am

sonicbomb wrote:

Did you copy and paste this Teller?

Not really, but I should thank Carey Sublette Cool

.

King (500 kt) Joined: Sep 28, 2007 Posts: 89

I see. We really need 500 MT bombs to nuke MILF!

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:21 pm

raigainousa wrote:

nuke MILF!

Please, someone clue me in to what exactly that means. I know what MILF usually means, but I don't see how it works in this context.

Forum Admin Joined: Aug 06, 2006 Posts: 1631 Location: UK

I thought the same thing but did'nt want to ask...

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:17 pm

sonicbomb wrote:

I thought the same thing but did'nt want to ask...

Ok, I get it. He wants to have sex with the bomb. That wasn't too hard. Laughing

Cherokee (3.8 mt) Joined: Mar 17, 2008 Posts: 402

He truly learned to love the bomb. Wink

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 am

Nuke MILF?

MILF nooky isn't MILF nuking, whatever that is.

Not being personal about this, but I don't find this article listed by Teller as informed or based upon any sort of real, even remotely confirmable information.

After discussions with a friend of mine in Moscow who is an expert professor in nuclear fusion engineering there, he told me that Soviets never gave out any information about their weapons designs. I asked for his assistance in helping me find nuclear weapons programs information in Russian language, which he did.

There is no way to confirm this web consumption fodder, that these components shown in the open panel have anything whatsoever to do with stages of fission or fusion.