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Teller-Ulam design is considered "the secret of the
hydrogen bomb"? | ||||||||||||
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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Juliarhaffner,
StephanCarroll.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 11:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Reading this article, the lede goes into way too much detail, I think. Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of the lede can all go, I think. I'd do it myself except I'm not reading carefully enough to tell if that content is duplicated elsewhere yet, so not sure whether those paragraphs should be moved or just deleted. —Alex ( Ashill | talk | contribs) 17:49, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
I have had a go at rewriting the lead, taking the comment above into account. Here is a proposed new lead:
A thermonuclear weapon, also known as a fusion weapon, hydrogen bomb or H bomb is a second-generation nuclear weapon design that gets the majority of its explosive force from nuclear fusion reactions. Compared with first-generation nuclear weapons, a thermonuclear weapon offers vastly greater destructive power, more compact size, and lower mass. The first full-scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952, and the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers.
The design of modern thermonuclear weapons is known in the United States as the Teller–Ulam configuration after its two chief contributors, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, who developed it in 1951. Similar devices were subsequently developed by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, China and India.
The Teller-Ulam configuration consists of two components: a nuclear fission primary stage fueled by fissile 235
U
or 239
Pu
, and a separate nuclear fusion secondary stage containing thermonuclear fuel in the form the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, and lithium, often in the form of lithium deuteride. X-rays from the fission primary compress the thermonuclear fuel, allowing a nuclear fusion reaction to propagate. Neutrons produced by the secondary stage can be used to initiate fission reactions in a uranium, enriched uranium, or depleted uranium tamper, or to initiate a tertiary fusion stage. In this way, thermonuclear weapons of limitless power can be constructed.
Everything is perfect until someone puts up a proposal, so critique away. Pinging @ HowardMorland: Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:08, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Thermonuclear weapon article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1,
2,
3,
4Auto-archiving period: 21 days
![]() |
![]() | Thermonuclear weapon is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the archive. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
![]() | A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the "
Did you know?" column on
July 25, 2005. The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the
Teller-Ulam design is considered "the secret of the
hydrogen bomb"? | ||||||||||||
Current status: Former featured article candidate |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available
on the course page. Student editor(s):
Juliarhaffner,
StephanCarroll.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT ( talk) 11:17, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Reading this article, the lede goes into way too much detail, I think. Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of the lede can all go, I think. I'd do it myself except I'm not reading carefully enough to tell if that content is duplicated elsewhere yet, so not sure whether those paragraphs should be moved or just deleted. —Alex ( Ashill | talk | contribs) 17:49, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
I have had a go at rewriting the lead, taking the comment above into account. Here is a proposed new lead:
A thermonuclear weapon, also known as a fusion weapon, hydrogen bomb or H bomb is a second-generation nuclear weapon design that gets the majority of its explosive force from nuclear fusion reactions. Compared with first-generation nuclear weapons, a thermonuclear weapon offers vastly greater destructive power, more compact size, and lower mass. The first full-scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952, and the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers.
The design of modern thermonuclear weapons is known in the United States as the Teller–Ulam configuration after its two chief contributors, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, who developed it in 1951. Similar devices were subsequently developed by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, China and India.
The Teller-Ulam configuration consists of two components: a nuclear fission primary stage fueled by fissile 235
U
or 239
Pu
, and a separate nuclear fusion secondary stage containing thermonuclear fuel in the form the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, and lithium, often in the form of lithium deuteride. X-rays from the fission primary compress the thermonuclear fuel, allowing a nuclear fusion reaction to propagate. Neutrons produced by the secondary stage can be used to initiate fission reactions in a uranium, enriched uranium, or depleted uranium tamper, or to initiate a tertiary fusion stage. In this way, thermonuclear weapons of limitless power can be constructed.
Everything is perfect until someone puts up a proposal, so critique away. Pinging @ HowardMorland: Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:08, 19 December 2023 (UTC)