During the arrangement of the site for nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, on August 12, 1953, I had to survive the explosion of the first hydrogen bomb on the globe with a capacity of 400 kilotons, the explosion occurred suddenly. The ground shook beneath us like water. The wave of the earth's surface passed and lifted us to a height of more than a meter. And we were at a distance of about 30 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. A flurry of air waves threw us to the ground. I rolled it for several meters, like chips. There was a wild roar. Lightning flashed blindingly. They instilled animal terror.
When we, the observers of this nightmare, rose, a nuclear mushroom hung over us. Warmth emanated from him and crackling was heard. As if spellbound, I looked into the leg of a giant mushroom. Suddenly, a plane flew up to him and began to make monstrous turns. I thought it was a hero pilot taking samples of radioactive air. Then the plane dived into the leg of the mushroom and disappeared ... It was amazing and scary.
There really were planes, tanks and other equipment on the field of the training ground. But later inquiries showed that not a single aircraft took air samples from the mushroom cloud. Was it a hallucination? The mystery was solved later. I realized that it was a chimney effect of gigantic proportions. There were no planes or tanks on the field after the explosion. But experts believed that they evaporated from the high temperature. I believe that they were simply drawn into the fiery mushroom. My observations and impressions were confirmed by other evidence.
On November 22, 1955, an even more powerful explosion was made. The charge of the hydrogen bomb was 600 kilotons. We prepared a site for this new explosion 2.5 kilometers from the epicenter of the previous nuclear explosion. The melted radioactive crust of the earth was immediately buried in trenches dug by bulldozers; they were preparing a new batch of equipment that was supposed to burn in the flame of a hydrogen bomb. The head of the construction of the Semipalatinsk test site was R. E. Ruzanov. He left an expressive description of this second explosion.
Residents of the "Bereg" (residential campus of testers), now the city of Kurchatov, were raised at 5 o'clock in the morning. It was cold -15°C. Everyone was taken to the stadium. The windows and doors of the houses were left open.
At the appointed hour, a giant plane appeared, accompanied by fighters.
The outbreak of the explosion arose unexpectedly and frighteningly. She was brighter than the sun. The sun has faded. It has disappeared. The clouds are gone. The sky turned black and blue. There was a blow of terrible force. He reached the stadium with the testers. The stadium was 60 kilometers from the epicenter. Despite this, the air wave knocked people to the ground and threw them tens of meters towards the stands. Thousands of people were knocked down. There was a wild cry from these crowds. Women and children were screaming. The whole stadium was filled with groans from injuries and pain that instantly startled people. The stadium with testers and residents of the town drowned in dust. The city was also invisible from the dust. The horizon, where the landfill was, boiled in clubs of flame. The leg of the atomic mushroom also seemed to be boiling. She was moving. It seemed that a boiling cloud was about to approach the stadium and cover us all. It was clearly seen how tanks, planes, parts of destroyed structures specially built on the field of the training ground began to be drawn into the cloud from the ground and disappear in it. The thought drilled into my head: we will be drawn into this cloud! Everyone was seized with numbness and horror.
Suddenly, the stem of the nuclear fungus broke away from the boiling cloud above. The cloud rose higher, and the leg settled to the ground. Only then did people come to their senses. Everyone rushed to the houses. There were no windows and doors, roofs, belongings in them. Everything was scattered around. Those injured during the tests were hastily collected and sent to the hospital ...
A week later, officers who arrived from the Semipalatinsk test site whispered about this monstrous spectacle. About the suffering that people endured. About tanks flying in the air. Comparing these stories with my observations, I realized that I was witnessing a phenomenon that can be called the chimney effect. Only on a gigantic scale.
Huge thermal masses during the hydrogen explosion broke away from the surface of the earth and moved towards the center of the fungus. This effect arose due to the monstrous temperatures that a nuclear explosion gave. In the initial stage of the explosion, the temperature was 30,000 degrees Celsius. In the stem of a nuclear mushroom, it was at least 8,000. A huge, monstrous suction force arose, drawing into the epicenter of the explosion any objects that were on the site. Therefore, the plane that I observed during the first nuclear explosion was not a hallucination. He was simply pulled into the leg of the mushroom, and he made incredible turns there ...
The process that I observed in the explosion of the hydrogen bomb is very dangerous. Not only by its high temperature, but also by the effect of the absorption of gigantic masses, which I understood, whether it be the air or water shell of the Earth.
My calculation in 1962 showed that if a nuclear fungus penetrated the atmosphere to a great height, it could cause a planetary catastrophe. When the mushroom rises to a height of 30 kilometers, the process of suction of the Earth's water-air masses into space will begin. The vacuum will start to work like a pump. The earth will lose its air and water shells along with the biosphere. Humanity will perish.
I calculated that for this apocalyptic process, an atomic bomb of only 2 thousand kilotons is enough, that is, only three times the power of the second hydrogen explosion. This is the simplest man-made scenario for the death of mankind.
At one time, I was forbidden to talk about it. Today I consider it my duty to speak directly and openly about the threat to humanity.
The Earth has accumulated huge stocks of nuclear weapons. The reactors of nuclear power plants operate all over the world. They can become prey for terrorists. The explosion of these objects can reach capacities greater than 2,000 kilotons. Potentially, the scenario of the death of civilization has already been prepared.
What follows from here? It is necessary to protect nuclear facilities from possible terrorism so carefully that they are completely inaccessible to him. Otherwise, a planetary catastrophe is inevitable.
Sergey Alekseenko
construction participant
Semipolatinsk nuclear
Ivy Mike - First atmospheric test of a hydrogen bomb by the United States at Enewetak Atoll on November 1, 1952.
65 years ago, the Soviet Union exploded its first thermonuclear bomb. How is this weapon arranged, what can it do and what can it not? On August 12, 1953, the first “practical” thermonuclear bomb was detonated in the USSR. We will talk about the history of its creation and see if it is true that such ammunition almost does not pollute the environment, but can destroy the world.
The idea of a thermonuclear weapon, where the nuclei of atoms merge rather than split, as in the atomic bomb, appeared no later than 1941. It came to the minds of the physicists Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller. Around the same time, they became involved in the Manhattan Project and helped create the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It turned out to be much more difficult to design a thermonuclear weapon.
You can roughly understand how much more complicated a thermonuclear bomb is than an atomic bomb by the fact that operating nuclear power plants have long been commonplace, and working and practical thermonuclear power plants are still science fiction.
In order for atomic nuclei to merge with each other, they must be heated to millions of degrees. The scheme of the device that would allow this to be done was patented by the Americans in 1946 (the project was unofficially called Super), but they remembered it only three years later, when a nuclear bomb was successfully tested in the USSR.
US President Harry Truman said that the Soviet breakthrough should be answered with "the so-called hydrogen or superbomb."
By 1951, the Americans had assembled the device and tested it under the code name "George". The design was a torus - in other words, a donut - with heavy isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. They were chosen because such nuclei are easier to merge than ordinary hydrogen nuclei. The fuse was a nuclear bomb. The explosion compressed deuterium and tritium, they merged, gave a stream of fast neutrons and ignited the uranium lining. In an ordinary atomic bomb, it does not fission: there are only slow neutrons that cannot make a stable isotope of uranium fission. Although the nuclear fusion energy accounted for approximately 10% of the total energy of the George explosion, the "ignition" of uranium-238 made it possible to raise the explosion power twice as high as usual, to 225 kilotons.
Due to the additional uranium, the explosion turned out to be twice as powerful as with a conventional atomic bomb. But thermonuclear fusion accounted for only 10% of the released energy: tests have shown that hydrogen nuclei are not compressed strongly enough.
Then the mathematician Stanislav Ulam proposed a different approach - a two-stage nuclear fuse. His idea was to place a plutonium rod in the "hydrogen" zone of the device. The explosion of the first fuse "ignited" the plutonium, two shock waves and two X-ray beams collided - the pressure and temperature jumped enough to start thermonuclear fusion. The new device was tested on the Enewetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in 1952 - the explosive power of the bomb was already ten megatons of TNT.
However, this device was also unsuitable for use as a military weapon.
In order for hydrogen nuclei to merge, the distance between them must be minimal, so deuterium and tritium were cooled to a liquid state, almost to absolute zero. This required a huge cryogenic facility. The second thermonuclear device, in fact an enlarged modification of the George, weighed 70 tons - you can’t drop this from an airplane.
The USSR began to develop a thermonuclear bomb later: the first scheme was proposed by Soviet developers only in 1949. It was supposed to use lithium deuteride. It is a metal, a solid, it does not need to be liquefied, and therefore a bulky refrigerator, as in the American version, was no longer required. No less important is the fact that lithium-6, when bombarded with neutrons from the explosion, gave helium and tritium, which further simplifies the further fusion of nuclei.
The RDS-6s bomb was ready in 1953. Unlike American and modern thermonuclear devices, there was no plutonium rod in it. Such a scheme is known as a "puff": layers of lithium deuteride were interspersed with uranium. On August 12, RDS-6s was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site.
The power of the explosion was 400 kilotons of TNT - 25 times less than in the second attempt by the Americans. But the RDS-6s could be dropped from the air. The same bomb was going to be used on intercontinental ballistic missiles. And already in 1955, the USSR improved its thermonuclear brainchild, equipping it with a plutonium rod.
Today, virtually all thermonuclear devices - apparently even North Korean ones - are somewhere between early Soviet and American models. They all use lithium deuteride as fuel and ignite it with a two-stage nuclear detonator.
As is known from leaks, even the most modern American W88 thermonuclear warhead is similar to the RDS-6c: layers of lithium deuteride are interspersed with uranium.
The difference is that modern thermonuclear munitions are not multi-megaton monsters like the Tsar Bomba, but systems with a capacity of hundreds of kilotons, like the RDS-6s. No one has megaton warheads in their arsenals, since militarily a dozen less powerful warheads are more valuable than one strong one: this allows you to hit more targets.
Technicians work with the American W80 thermonuclear warhead
What a thermonuclear bomb can't
Hydrogen is an extremely common element, and there is enough of it in the Earth's atmosphere.
At one time it was said that a sufficiently powerful thermonuclear explosion could start a chain reaction and all the air on our planet would burn out. But this is a myth.
Not only gaseous, but also liquid hydrogen is not dense enough to start thermonuclear fusion. It must be compressed and heated by a nuclear explosion, preferably from different sides, as is done with a two-stage fuse. There are no such conditions in the atmosphere, so self-sustaining nuclear fusion reactions are impossible there.
This is not the only misconception about thermonuclear weapons. It is often said that an explosion is “cleaner” than a nuclear explosion: they say that when hydrogen nuclei merge, there are fewer “fragments” - dangerous short-lived nuclei of atoms that give radioactive contamination - less than when fissioning uranium nuclei.
This misconception is based on the fact that during a thermonuclear explosion, most of the energy is allegedly released due to the fusion of nuclei. It is not true. Yes, the "Tsar Bomba" was like that, but only because its uranium "shirt" for testing was replaced with lead. Modern two-stage fuses lead to significant radioactive contamination.
The zone of possible total defeat by the "Tsar Bomba", plotted on a map of Paris. The red circle is the zone of complete destruction (radius 35 km). The yellow circle is the size of the fireball (radius 3.5 km).
True, there is still a grain of truth in the myth of the "clean" bomb. Take the best American thermonuclear warhead W88. With its explosion at the optimal height above the city, the area of severe destruction will practically coincide with the zone of radioactive damage, dangerous to life. There will be vanishingly few deaths from radiation sickness: people will die from the explosion itself, and not from radiation.
Another myth says that thermonuclear weapons are capable of destroying the entire human civilization, and even life on Earth. This is also practically impossible. The energy of the explosion is distributed in three dimensions, therefore, with an increase in the power of the ammunition by a thousand times, the radius of the damaging effect grows only ten times - a megaton warhead has a radius of destruction only ten times greater than a tactical, kiloton one.
66 million years ago, an asteroid impact caused the extinction of most land animals and plants. The impact power was about 100 million megatons - this is 10 thousand times more than the total power of all the thermonuclear arsenals of the Earth. 790 thousand years ago, an asteroid collided with the planet, the impact was a million megatons, but there were no traces of at least moderate extinction (including our genus Homo) after that. Both life in general and a person are much stronger than they seem.
The truth about thermonuclear weapons is not as popular as the myths. Today it is like this: thermonuclear arsenals of compact medium-yield warheads provide a delicate strategic balance, because of which no one can freely iron other countries of the world with atomic weapons. The fear of a thermonuclear response is more than enough of a deterrent.
The content of the article
H-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.
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 a nuclear reactor by 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, in the testing of a massive nuclear device, the explosion power of which was 4 x 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. Fusion of deuterium and tritium nuclei produces helium and fast neutrons, the energy of which is large enough to cause the fission of uranium-238 nuclei (the main isotope of uranium, much cheaper than the uranium-235 used in conventional atomic bombs). 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 nearly 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.
Consequences of the explosion.
Shock wave and thermal effect.
The direct (primary) impact of a superbomb explosion is threefold. The most obvious of the direct effects is a shock wave of tremendous intensity. The strength of its impact, depending on the power of the bomb, the height of the explosion above the ground and the nature of the terrain, decreases with distance from the epicenter of the explosion. The thermal effect of an explosion is determined by the same factors, but, in addition, it also depends on the transparency of the air - fog sharply reduces the distance at which a thermal flash can cause serious burns.
According to calculations, in the event of an explosion in the atmosphere of a 20-megaton bomb, people will remain alive in 50% of cases if they 1) take refuge in an underground reinforced concrete shelter at a distance of about 8 km from the epicenter of the explosion (EW), 2) are in ordinary urban buildings at a distance of approx. . 15 km from the EW, 3) were in the open at a distance of approx. 20 km from EV. In conditions of poor visibility and at a distance of at least 25 km, if the atmosphere is clear, for people in open areas, the probability of surviving increases rapidly with distance from the epicenter; at a distance of 32 km, its calculated value is more than 90%. The area in which the penetrating radiation that occurs during the explosion causes a lethal outcome is relatively small, even in the case of a high-yield superbomb.
Fire ball.
Depending on the composition and mass of the combustible material involved in the fireball, gigantic self-sustaining firestorms can form, raging for many hours. However, the most dangerous (albeit secondary) consequence of the explosion is radioactive contamination of the environment.
Fallout.
How they are formed.
When a bomb explodes, the resulting fireball is filled with a huge amount of radioactive particles. Usually, these particles are so small that once they get into the upper atmosphere, they can remain there for a long time. But if the fireball comes into contact with the surface of the Earth, everything that is on it, it turns into red-hot dust and ash and draws them into a fiery tornado. In the vortex of flame, they mix and bind with radioactive particles. Radioactive dust, except for the largest, does not settle immediately. Finer dust is carried away by the resulting explosion cloud and gradually falls out as it moves downwind. Directly at the site of the explosion, radioactive fallout can be extremely intense - mainly coarse dust settling on the ground. Hundreds of kilometers from the site of the explosion and at longer distances, small, but still visible ash particles fall to the ground. Often they form a snow-like cover, deadly to anyone who happens to be nearby. Even smaller and invisible particles, before they settle on the ground, can wander in the atmosphere for months and even years, going around the globe many times. By the time they fall out, their radioactivity is significantly weakened. The most dangerous is the radiation of strontium-90 with a half-life of 28 years. Its fall is clearly observed throughout the world. Settling on foliage and grass, it enters food chains, including humans. As a consequence of this, noticeable, although not yet dangerous, amounts of strontium-90 have been found in the bones of the inhabitants of most countries. The accumulation of strontium-90 in human bones is very dangerous in the long term, as it leads to the formation of malignant bone tumors.
Prolonged contamination of the area with radioactive fallout.
In the event of hostilities, the use of a hydrogen bomb will lead to immediate radioactive contamination of the territory within a radius of approx. 100 km from the epicenter of the explosion. In the event of a superbomb explosion, an area of tens of thousands of square kilometers will be contaminated. Such a huge area of \u200b\u200bdestruction with a single bomb makes it a completely new type of weapon. Even if the super bomb does not hit the target, i.e. will not hit the object with shock-thermal effects, penetrating radiation and radioactive fallout accompanying the explosion will make the surrounding area unsuitable for habitation. Such precipitation can continue for many days, weeks and even months. Depending on their number, the intensity of radiation can reach deadly levels. A relatively small number of superbombs is enough to completely cover a large country with a layer of radioactive dust deadly to all living things. Thus, the creation of the superbomb marked the beginning of an era when it became possible to render entire continents uninhabitable. Even long after direct exposure to radioactive fallout has ceased, there will still be a danger due to the high radiotoxicity of isotopes such as strontium-90. With food grown on soils contaminated with this isotope, radioactivity will enter the human body.
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 ranked according to the appearance of nuclear weapons in their arsenal. 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 occurs 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 name "thermonuclear bomb", from the reaction that underlies this weapon.
After the world saw the destructive power of nuclear weapons, in August 1945, the USSR began a race that continued until 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 United States at that time had four times less bombs in strength) 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 of mass destruction. After a 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 the 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 proceeds, we can get the following types of global climate change:
- 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 the "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 a small ice age, when the reflection of sunlight from the surface 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 North Korean government constantly reports that they have 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 at the moment, the DPRK 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.
How Soviet physicists made the hydrogen bomb, what pros and cons this terrible weapon carried, read in the History of Science section.
After the Second World War, it was still impossible to talk about the actual onset of peace - the two major world powers entered into an arms race. One of the facets of this conflict was the confrontation between the USSR and the USA in the creation of nuclear weapons. In 1945, the United States, the first to silently enter the race, dropped nuclear bombs on the infamous cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the Soviet Union, work was also underway to create nuclear weapons, and in 1949 they tested the first atomic bomb, the working substance in which was plutonium. Even during its development, Soviet intelligence found out that the United States had switched to developing a more powerful bomb. This prompted the USSR to engage in the manufacture of thermonuclear weapons.
The intelligence officers could not find out what results the Americans had achieved, and the attempts of the Soviet nuclear scientists were unsuccessful. Therefore, it was decided to create a bomb, the explosion of which would occur due to the fusion of light nuclei, and not the fission of heavy ones, as in an atomic bomb. In the spring of 1950, work began on the creation of a bomb, which later received the name RDS-6s. Among its developers was the future Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, who proposed the idea of a charge design back in 1948, but later opposed nuclear testing.
Andrey Sakharov
Vladimir Fedorenko/Wikimedia Commons
Sakharov proposed covering the plutonium core with several layers of light and heavy elements, namely uranium and deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Subsequently, however, it was proposed to replace deuterium with lithium deuteride - this greatly simplified the design of the charge and its operation. An additional advantage was that from lithium, after being bombarded with neutrons, another isotope of hydrogen, tritium, is obtained. Reacting with deuterium, tritium releases much more energy. In addition, lithium also slows down neutrons better. This structure of the bomb gave her the nickname "Puff".
A certain difficulty was that the thickness of each layer and their final number were also very important for a successful test. According to calculations, from 15% to 20% of the energy release during the explosion came from thermonuclear reactions, and another 75-80% from the fission of uranium-235, uranium-238 and plutonium-239 nuclei. It was also assumed that the yield of the charge will be from 200 to 400 kilotons, the practical result was at the upper limit of forecasts.
On X-Day, August 12, 1953, the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested in action. The Semipalatinsk test site where the explosion occurred was located in the East Kazakhstan region. The RDS-6s test was preceded by an attempt in 1949 (then a ground explosion of a 22.4 kiloton bomb was carried out at the test site). Despite the isolated position of the test site, the population of the region experienced the beauty of nuclear testing firsthand. People who lived relatively close to the test site for decades, until the closure of the test site in 1991, were exposed to radiation, and territories many kilometers from the test site were contaminated with nuclear fission products.
The first Soviet hydrogen bomb RDS-6s
Wikimedia Commons
A week before the RDS-6s test, according to eyewitnesses, the military gave money and food to the families of those living near the test site, but there was no evacuation and no information about upcoming events. The radioactive soil was removed from the test site itself, and the nearest structures and observation posts were restored. It was decided to detonate the hydrogen bomb on the surface of the earth, despite the fact that the configuration allowed it to be dropped from an aircraft.
Previous tests of atomic charges were strikingly different from what was recorded by nuclear scientists after testing the Sakharov puff. The energy yield of the bomb, which critics call not a thermonuclear bomb, but a thermonuclear-enhanced atomic bomb, turned out to be 20 times greater than that of previous charges. It was noticeable to the naked eye in sunglasses: only dust remained from the surviving and restored buildings after the test of the hydrogen bomb.