4
THE COMPONENTS OF NUCLEAR AND
THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS
A country intending to fabricate nuclear weapons must acquire or produce a wide range
of components. The major components for a pure fission weapon include: very high
quality conventional high explosives; detonators for these explosives; electronic circuits
to fire the detonators; a tamper and reflector; a core of fissile nuclear material, mainly
weapon-grade plutonium or highly-enriched uranium; a neutron source to initiate a
fission chain reaction.
If the explosive yield of a fission weapon is to be ‘boosted’ by some fusion a tritium
source will be required. A thermonuclear weapon requires a quantity of lithium deuteride
to provide fusion and highly-enriched uranium to ignite the fusion process. The
components of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons are now described in some detail.
FISSION WEAPONS
The basic nuclear weapon is the fission weapon (originally called the A-bomb) which
relies entirely on a fission chain reaction to produce a very large amount of energy in a
very short time—roughly a millionth of a second—and therefore a very powerful
explosion. The fission weapons built so far have used the U-235 or Pu-239 as the fissile
material. Thorium (Th) could, in theory, also be used. When the nucleus of the isotope
Th-232 captures a neutron it becomes Th-233 which undergoes radioactive decay to U-
233, which is fissile material like U-235 or Pu-239. Thorium has, however, not been used
as the fissile material in nuclear weapons.
Critical mass
The smallest amount of fissile in which a self-sustaining chain reaction is just sustained is
called the critical mass. The critical mass is that from which just as many neutrons escape
per unit time as are released by fission.
If this mass of material is increased, the number of neutrons produced by fission builds
up, and considerably more fissions occur in each successive generation of fission. A
‘super-critical’ mass is created and a nuclear explosion takes place. In a super-critical
mass the rate of production of fission neutrons exceeds all neutron losses and a rapid and
uncontrollable increase in the number of neutrons within the mass occurs.
The critical mass depends on a number of factors. First, the nuclear properties of the
material used for the fission, whether it is U-235 or Pu-239. Second, the shape of the
material—a sphere is the optimum shape because for a given mass the surface area is
minimized which, in turn, minimizes the number of neutrons escaping through the
surface per unit time and thereby lost to the fission process. Third, the density of the
material (the higher the density the shorter the average distance travelled by a neutron
before causing another fission and therefore the smaller the critical mass). Four, the
purity of the material (if materials other than the one used for fission are present, some
neutrons may be captured by their nuclei instead of causing fission). Five, the physical
surrounding of the material used for fission (if the material is surrounded by a medium
like beryllium, which reflects neutrons back into the material, some of the reflected
neutrons may be used for fission which would otherwise have been lost, thus reducing the
critical mass).
Plutonium metal occurs in six phases, each having a different density (ranging from
19.8 to 15.92 grammes per cubic centimetre) and crystalline form. As normally produced,
plutonium metal is brittle and difficult to machine into precise shapes. To make
plutonium more machinable, it is alloyed, usually with gallium or indium. A typical alloy
for use in nuclear weapons would probably contain 2 per cent by weight (8 per cent by
atoms) of gallium.
Alloying plutonium in one phase prevents it changing to another phase. This is
important because a phase change, and the associated change in density, will change the
volume of the mass of plutonium which may distort it. It would be very undesirable if
this occurred in the carefully machined plutonium pieces in a nuclear weapon.
The critical mass of, for example, a sphere of pure Pu-239 metal in the alpha phase,
which has a density of 19.8 grammes per cubic centimetre and is the densest form of the
metal, is about 10 kilogrammes. The radius of the sphere is about 5 centimetres, about the
size of a small grapefruit. If the plutonium sphere is surrounded by a natural uranium
neutron reflector, about 10 centimetres thick, the critical mass is reduced to about 4.4
kilogrammes, a sphere of radius of about 3.6 centimetres, about the size of an orange. A
32-centimetre thick beryllium reflector reduces the critical mass of alpha-phase Pu-239 to
about 2.5 kilogrammes, a sphere of radius of 3.1 centimetres, about the size of a tennis
ball.
Using a cunning technique called implosion, in which conventional chemical
explosives are used to produce a shock wave which uniformly compresses the plutonium
sphere, the volume of the plutonium sphere can be reduced and its density increased. If
the original mass of the plutonium is just less than critical it will, after compression,
become super-critical and a nuclear explosion will take place.
In practice, Pu-239 in the delta phase, which has density of 15.92 grammes per cubic
centimetre, is used. The delta phase, which has a cubic crystalline form, would be
typically stabilized as a gallium alloy. Using implosion the density of the plutonium can
be roughly doubled so that a nuclear explosion could, with the best modern design
including an effective, but practicable, reflector, be achieved with about 3 kilogrammes
of delta-phase Pu-239. The trick is to obtain very uniform compression of the sphere. In
such a weapon, the implosion will liquefy the plutonium before the explosion blows it
apart.
The components of nuclear and theronuclear weapons 26
Nuclear-weapon designers prefer the concentration of Pu-239 to be as high as possible.
The larger the concentration, the smaller the critical mass and, hence, the bigger the
explosive yield for a given weight of plutonium. Plutonium containing more than 93 per
cent of Pu-239 is called weapons-grade. Nominal weapons-grade plutonium contains 0.05
per cent Pu-238; 93 per cent Pu-239; 6.4 per cent Pu-240; 0.5 per cent Pu-241; and 0.05
per cent Pu-242. For the best yield-to-weight ratio, super-grade plutonium is used,
containing 98 per cent Pu-239 and 2 per cent Pu-240.
The complete fission of 1 kilogramme of Pu-239 would produce an explosion
equivalent to that of 18,000 tonnes (18 kilotonnes, or kt) of TNT. Modern fission bombs
have efficiencies approaching 40 per cent, giving yields of 7 kilotonnes or so per
kilogramme of plutonium present. It is this high yield-to-weight ratio that makes nuclear
weapons so special.
Implosion
In an implosion design, the plutonium would be surrounded by a spherical shell, made
from a heavy metal, like natural uranium, which acts both as the tamper and reflector.
The conventional explosive used to compress the plutonium sphere is placed outside the
tamper.
The tamper has two functions. First, because the tamper is made of heavy metal, its
inertia helps hold together the plutonium during the explosion to prevent the premature
disintegration of the fissioning material and thereby obtain a greater efficiency. Second,
the tamper
How nuclear weapons spread 27
Figure 3 Direct routes to nuclear weapons. All these
operations may be done under military control
on a small scale and secretly. Nuclear
explosives may be produced as by-products of
a peaceful nuclear-power programme.
The components of nuclear and theronuclear weapons 28
converts the divergent detonation wave into a convergent shock wave to compress the
plutonium sphere.
The tamper may also serve to reflect back into the plutonium some of the neutrons
which escaped through the surface of the plutonium core to minimize the mass of
plutonium needed. In some designs the reflector is of a different material from the
tamper, in which case the plutonium sphere is surrounded by another spherical shell,
situated between the plutonium and the tamper. Beryllium is a good neutronreflecting
material.
An excellent description of a first-generation plutonium fission nuclear weapon is
given by Margaret Go wing. Her description of an early British weapon (which she calls
‘the gadget’) follows. The first nuclear weapons developed by a country are likely to be
of this type.
An implosion design has been chosen, in which the mass of high explosive,
surrounding a sphere containing both the fissile material and a tamper, was so
arranged as to produce a shock wave travelling radially inwards and thus
compressing the material. (Author’s note: The high explosive was arranged in a
number of shaped charges, called ‘lenses’.) The design had the advantage of
high velocities, which reduced the chance of pre-detonation despite the many
background neutrons present in plutonium; at the same time the material was
compressed to such density that super-critical masses were obtained with
comparatively little material. It had been realised at Los Alamos (the Manhattan
Project) that performance could be improved by using explosive lens to turn the
divergent waves, which started from detonators, into parts of a common
spherical wave converging on the centre of the sphere.
The main components of the gadget can be listed, working from outside to the
centre. First came the detonators, which operated from an impulse from a firing
device and involved other auxiliaries like safety switches and arming circuits.
The detonation had to be started simultaneously in all the lenses; the lenses
themselves were carefully calculated shapes, containing a combination of fast
and slow explosive so that transit from the detonator to every point on the inner
spherical surface of lens was simultaneous. The detonation from the lenses then
reached a spherical shell of homogeneous high explosive called the supercharge.
Within the supercharge was the tamper, which converted the divergent
detonation wave into a convergent shock wave, reflected some of the neutrons
back into the fissile material and generally increased the efficiency of the
explosion. Within the tamper was the plutonium and within that the initiator.
The last component was necessary because, although the implosion resulted in a
powerful compression of the fissile material and the surrounding tamper, the
material would stay compressed only for a few microseconds and would then
expand again very quickly. It was therefore essential to make sure that the chain
started at the right moment. This could be done by creating at the centre of the
fissile material an intense neutron source.
(Gowing 1974)
How nuclear weapons spread 29
The compression of the plutonium sphere can be improved if the sphere is suspended
within the tamper, with an air gap between the sphere and the tamper. This space allows
the tamper to gain momentum before hitting the sphere, considerably increasing the
compressive shock, a technique called ‘levitation’ (Hansen 1988).
Pre-detonation
In a nuclear explosion exceedingly high temperatures (hundreds of millions of degrees
centigrade) and exceedingly high pressures (millions of atmospheres) build up very
rapidly (in about one-half of a millionth of a second, the time taken for about 55
generations of fission). The mass of the material used for fission expands at very high
speeds—initially at a speed of about 1,000 kilometres a second. In much less than a
millionth of a second the size and density of the material have changed so that it becomes
less than critical and the chain reaction stops. The designer of a nuclear weapon aims at
keeping the fissionable material together, against its tendency to fly apart, long enough to
produce an explosion powerful enough for his purpose.
A major problem in designing implosion fission weapons for maximum efficiency is to
prevent the chain reaction from being started before the maximum achievable supercriticality
is reached—an eventuality called pre-detonation. Pre-detonation is most likely
to be caused by a neutron from spontaneous fission—fission that occurs naturally without
the stimulation of an external neutron—in the material used for fission. In 6 kilogrammes
of Pu-239, for example, the average time between spontaneous fissions is only about
three-millionths of a second. To prevent pre-detonation and loss of efficiency, the
assembly of a plutonium bomb must be very rapid. Implosion is necessary.
The spontaneous fission rate in the plutonium used to fabricate a fission weapon is
clearly important. The fewer spontaneous fissions the better. In super-grade plutonium
the rate is about 20 spontaneous fission neutrons per gramme per second whereas it is 66
spontaneous fission neutrons per gramme per second in weapons-grade plutonium.
This rate is very small compared with the huge number of neutrons produced in a
fission chain reaction. About 1023 nuclei of Pu-239 are fissioned to produce each
kilotonne of explosive yield. This number of fissions would produce about 2.5×1023
neutrons.
Reactor-grade plutonium
The isotopic composition of the plutonium produced in reactors operated for different
purposes varies. The plutonium produced specifically for military purposes is, as we have
seen, rich in the isotope Pu-239, typically containing more than 93 per cent of Pu-239.
Plutonium produced in nuclear-power reactors operated to produce electricity in the most
economical way, known as reactor-grade plutonium, typically contains only about 60 per
cent Pu-239. About 25 per cent is Pu-240 (in weapons-grade plutonium the amount is
typically about 7 per cent) and about 10 per cent is Pu-241. If the reactor fuel is burnt at a
very fast rate, the plutonium will contain about 40 per cent Pu-239, about 30 per cent Pu-
240, about 15 per cent Pu-241, and about 15 per cent Pu-242.
The components of nuclear and theronuclear weapons 30
Can reactor-grade plutonium be used to produce nuclear explosions? This is an
important question because, if it can, countries operating nuclear-power reactors for
peaceful purposes have access to plutonium that could be used to produce nuclear
weapons. And, as the quantity of reactor-grade plutonium in the world increases, it
becomes easier for a country to acquire it illegally and produce nuclear weapons. That
reactor-grade plutonium can be used to produce a nuclear weapon has been shown in the
USA, where at least two such devices have been built and tested.
The critical mass of typical reactor-grade plutonium in the form of a bare metal sphere
surrounded by a natural uranium reflector, about 10 centimetres thick, is about 7
kilogrammes. Reactor-grade plutonium is usually stored, after reprocessing, in the form
of plutonium oxide and is, therefore, most likely to be available in this form. The oxide
can, however, be easily converted to the metal form.
Amory Lovins (1980) explains that the view that reactor-grade plutonium cannot be
used in nuclear weapons is based on the following assumptions:
Lovins concludes that ‘each of these assumptions contains, in certain circumstances, an
element of truth’ but, he adds, ‘each is generally, or can by plausible counter-measures be
rendered, false. Their implication that reactor-grade plutonium is not very dangerous is
wishful thinking, and causes the proliferation risks of civil nuclear activities to be gravely
underestimated.’
The conventional high explosives
The timing of the detonations of the chemical explosives to produce the shock wave to
compress the plutonium sphere is crucial for the efficient operation of an implosion
atomic bomb. Microsecond (a milli-onth of a second) precision is essential. The shapes of
the explosive lenses are rather complex and must be carefully calculated. The high
explosive must be chemically extremely pure and of constant constituency throughout its
volume.
The conventional high explosives used to compress the spherical fissile core of a
nuclear weapon are one of the most crucial components. If the compression is not
symmetrical or rapid enough the nuclear explosion will not reach its predicted explosive
yield. So important is the constituency of the high explosives that details of the chemicals
used, the methods of their preparation, and the size and shape of the charges are closely
guarded secrets.
The Nagasaki bomb used high-explosive charges of Composition B, a mixture of
cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX)—(CH2)3N3 (NO2)3—and trinitrotoluene (TNT)—
1 that reactor-grade plutonium is far more hazardous than weapon-grade plutonium to
people dealing with it;
2 that a nuclear explosive device made from reactor-grade plutonium is much more
likely to explode unintentionally;
3 that such a device, if it explodes at all, will not explode violently enough to do
much damage, nor to accomplish the main aims of the makers; and
4 that its explosive yield is too unpredictable to be acceptable to its makers.
How nuclear weapons spread 31
C6H2 (NO2)3CH3. Composition B is a fastburning explosive more effective than TNT on
its own. More modern implosion charges use diaminotrinitrobenzene (DATB)—C6H3
(NO2)3NH2—or triaminotrinitrobenzine (TATB)—C6H3 (NO2)3NH3. DATB and TATB
are relatively insensitive to shocks.
Pentaerythrtoltetranitrate (PETN)—C(CH2O(NO2)4 and
cyclotetramethylenetetranitramine (HMX)—(CH2)3N3 (NO2)3—have also been used in
nuclear weapons. The Iraqis, for example, were experimenting with HMX for use in their
nuclear weapons. The amount of high explosive used in a fission weapon has decreased
considerably since 1945—from about 500 kilogrammes to as little as about 45
kilogrammes in modern nuclear weapons (Hansen 1988).
Normally, the more explosive charges there are the more perfect is the spherical
symmetry of the shock wave. Forty or so detonations would be typical. Getting the timing
of the detonation sequence—milli-microsecond (a thousandth of a millionth of a second)
precision is essential—and the chemistry and geometrical shapes of the explosive lenses
right are the most difficult problems in designing an efficient implosion-type nuclear
fission weapon. The most sophisticated fission weapons use geometries other than the
one described above. For example, the high explosive is arranged in an ellipsoid
geometry, and only two detonators are used, one at each end of the ellipsoid. This
arrangement is used, for example, in nuclear artillery shells.
Firing the detonators
A typical circuit to fire the detonators uses krytrons to generate short, high-current pulses
with amplitudes of about 4,000 volts and rise-and-fall times of a few milli-microseconds.
The krytron is a cold-cathode, gas-filled switch using an arc discharge to conduct high
peak currents for short times.
The energy in the current pulse used to fire the detonators in a nuclear weapon is
normally produced by charged capacitors. Because the rate of change of current is very
large, the capacitors must have a very low self-inductance. This is why the manufacture
of such capacitors, rugged enough for military use, requires special attention.
The neutron source
For maximum efficiency, the chain reaction in an atomic bomb must be initiated at
precisely the right moment—the moment of maximum super-criticality. The initiation is
achieved by a pulse of neutrons.
In earlier fission weapons, the neutron pulse was produced from a polonium-beryllium
source. When alpha-particles from the polonium bombard the beryllium, neutrons are
produced. In a fission weapon, the polonium and beryllium are contained in a hollow
sphere placed at the centre of the plutonium sphere. The polonium and beryllium are
placed on opposite sides of the hollow sphere. When the high-explosive lenses are
detonated, the shock wave crushes the hollow sphere and mixes the polonium and
beryllium, producing a pulse of neutrons.
In today’s nuclear weapons, the neutron pulse is produced by a small electronic device
The components of nuclear and theronuclear weapons 32
called a neutron ‘gun’, which is a much more effective neutron generator than a
polonium-beryllium source. In a neutron gun a high voltage is used to accelerate
small amounts of tritium and deuterium. When the tritium and deuterium nuclei
collide (and fuse—in this case, a difference in electrical potential is used to give
momentum to the nuclei, instead of the high temperature of a fission explosion),
neutrons (on the order of several tens of millions) are released. These large
numbers of initial neutrons create many fission reactions at the start of the
fission chain reaction explosion, thus increasing the efficiency
of the explosion and allowing more of the plutonium to fission before it is blown apart
(Hansen 1988).
The neutron gun can be used to vary the explosive yield of a fission nuclear weapon.
Variable yields can be obtained either by varying the voltage across the device—which
alters the velocity of the tritium and deuterium nuclei and hence the efficiency of the
fusion process—or by varying the amount of tritium or deuterium used.
The problem of getting the timing of the shaped-charge detonations and the injection of
the neutron pulse right is mainly theoretical, in calculating the timing sequence for
optimum efficiency. The practical problems of manufacturing the electronic components
and building the circuits to produce the calculated sequence of triggering pulses are much
less difficult.
Highly-enriched uranium as fissile material
The alternative to Pu-239 as the fissile material in a nuclear weapon is U-235, although
some of the most advanced types of nuclear weapons contain both materials arranged in
thin concentric shells, rather than a solid sphere. Plutonium undergoes fission faster than
uranium, and placing it inside a shell of enriched uranium makes more efficient use of its
fission neutrons. In this way a greater explosive power can be achieved for a given mass
of fissile material.
The amount of highly-enriched uranium in, for example, the American nuclear arsenal
is about 500 tonnes, five times the amount of plutonium in the arsenal. But the more
modern nuclear weapons tend to use relatively more plutonium than earlier models.
In U-235, the average time between spontaneous fissions is much greater than it is in
Pu-239 and the so-called ‘gun’ method can be used to assemble a critical mass of U-235
in a nuclear weapon. In the Hiroshima bomb, for example, a less than critical mass of U-
235 was fired down a ‘cannon barrel’ (the barrel from a naval gun) into another less than
critical mass of U-235 placed in front of the ‘muzzle’. When the two masses came
together they formed a super-critical mass which exploded.
About 60 kilogrammes of U-235 were used in the Hiroshima bomb. About 700
grammes were fissioned. The average time between spontaneous fissions was about onefiftieth
of a second—quite adequate for the gun technique. The yield of the Hiroshima
bomb was about 12.5 kt.
A fission weapon using U-235 can, however, also be made using the implosion
How nuclear weapons spread 33
technique. If surrounded by a reflector made from natural uranium 15 centimetres thick,
100 per cent pure U-235 has a critical mass of 15 kilogrammes (compared with 4.4
kilogrammes for Pu-239). With uranium enriched to 40 per cent U-235, the critical mass
increases to 75 kilogrammes; with 20 per cent U-235, it is 250 kilogrammes. High
concentrations of U-235 are, therefore, highly desirable if the material is to be used to
produce nuclear weapons.
Designs based on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are likely to be used by countries
beginning a nuclear-weapon programme. But even the first weapons now produced by a
country would probably be more sophisticated than these early, primitive weapons. The
Nagasaki bomb, for example, was about 3 metres long, 1.5 metres wide, and weighed
about 4.5 tons. A modern fission weapon, even the first produced in a nuclear-weapon
programme, should weigh no more than a few hundred kilogrammes.
The difficulty of designing and fabricating a nuclear weapon from either Pu-239 or U-
235 is often exaggerated. A competent group of nuclear physicists, and electronic and
explosive engineers, given adequate resources and access to the literature, would have
little difficulty in designing and constructing such a weapon from scratch. They would
not need access to any classified literature.
BOOSTED FISSION WEAPONS
Although very large explosions—equivalent to the explosion of 100 or 200 kt of TNT—
can be obtained from nuclear weapons based on pure fission, there is a limit to the
explosive power that can be obtained from a militarily operational one. The maximum
explosive power of a militarily usable fission weapon is 50 kt. Higher explosive power
than can be achieved by a pure fission nuclear device can be obtained by ‘boosting’.
In a boosted weapon, some fusion material is placed at the centre of the plutonium
sphere in a fission weapon. When the fission weapon explodes, the temperature and
pressure at the centre of the core are such that nuclear fusion can take place (see page 38).
The neutrons produced during the fusion process produce additional fissions in the
plutonium in the weapon before it disintegrates, increasing its efficiency. In an unboosted
fission weapon, the rate of production of generations of fissions is about 100 per
microsecond, for a boosted weapon it is about 1,000 per microsecond. Boosted weapons
are, therefore, about ten times more efficient than unboosted ones.
The fusion in a boosted weapon is used mainly as an additional source of neutrons to
help the fission process, rather than as a direct source of energy. Because the efficiency
of the weapon is increased, a higher explosive yield is achieved for a given weight of
plutonium.
Boosted weapons are essentially sophisticated fission weapons. Using boosting, a
much higher explosive power is obtained from a given amount of plutonium. Militarily
usable boosted weapons have explosive powers of up to about 500 kt, i.e. about ten times
the power of non-boosted operational weapons. The yields of the most powerful boosted
weapons are equal to those of low-yield thermonuclear weapons.
In a typical boosted weapon a mixture of deuterium and tritium gases (heavy isotopes
The components of nuclear and theronuclear weapons 34
of hydrogen) is used as the fusion material. Deuterium is found in natural hydrogen at a
concentration of 0.015 per cent. Tritium is normally produced by bombarding lithium-6
with neutrons in a nuclear reactor.
A pressurised deuterium-tritium mixture is injected from a reservoir, placed outside the
fission-weapon core, into a space at the centre of the plutonium sphere after the fission
process has begun. Because the centre of the sphere is needed for the fusion mixture, a
boosted weapon must be initiated by an external neutron gun.
The pressure in the boosting system is typically about 20 million N per m2 and about 5
grammes of the deuterium-tritium gas mixture are injected into the centre of the
plutonium sphere. The timing of the injection is crucial for maximum efficiency.
The explosive yield of a boosted weapon can be varied by varying the amount of
tritium and deuterium injected onto the core of the weapon. Alternatively, as described
above, the yield can be varied by varying the voltage on the neutron gun.
Because tritium has a relatively short half-life of 12.3 years, the tritium in the reservoir
has to be replaced regularly. For ease of replacement the reservoir is fixed on the exterior
of the weapon.
THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS
If explosions in the range of a few thousand kilotonnes are required, extra energy must be
obtained from fusion. The fusion process is the opposite of fission. In fission, heavy
nuclei are split into lighter ones. In fusion, light nuclei are formed (i.e. fused) into heavier
nuclei.
In nuclear weapons, the heavier isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium—are
fused together to form helium. The fusion process, like the fission process, produces
energy and is accompanied by the emission of neutrons. There is no critical mass for the
fusion process and therefore, in theory, there is no limit to the explosive yield of fusion
weapons—or H-bombs (H for hydrogen) as they are often called.
Fission is relatively easy to initiate—one neutron will start a chain reaction going in a
critical mass of a fissile material, such as Pu-239 or U-235. But fusion is possible only if
the nuclei to be fused together are given a high enough energy to overcome the repulsive
electric force between them due to their positive electric charges. In H-bombs, this
energy is provided by raising the temperature of the fusion material. Because H-bombs
depend on heat they are also called thermonuclear weapons.
In a typical thermonuclear weapon, deuterium and tritium are fused together. But to get
this fusion reaction to work, the deuterium-tritium mixture must be raised to a
temperature of a hundred million degrees centigrade or so. This can be provided only by
a pure fission nuclear weapon (atomic bomb) in which such a temperature occurs at the
moment of the explosion. An H-bomb, therefore, consists of a fission stage, which is an
atomic bomb acting as a trigger, and a fusion stage, in which hydrogen isotopes (tritium
and deuterium) are fused by the heat produced by the trigger.
Normally, the fusion material is in the form of a cylinder. The cylinder is made out of
lithium-6 deuteride. When neutrons from the fission explosion bombard lithium-6 nuclei
How nuclear weapons spread 35
in the lithium deuteride, tritium nuclei are produced. The tritium nuclei fuse with
deuterium nuclei in the lithium deuteride to produce fusion energy.
These nuclear processes, employing lithium in a breeding cycle to produce tritium, and
deuterium and tritium to produce fusion, can be described as follows:
lithium-6+neutron→tritium+helium-4+4.8 Mev of energy
deuterium+tritium→helium-4+neutron+17.6 Mev of energy
(Mev=million electron volts of energy)
It is very advantageous to use lithium-6 deuteride as the fusion material because it is a
solid at normal temperatures whereas tritium and deuterium, the fusion materials used in
boosted weapons, are gases at normal temperatures. It is, of course, much easier to
construct nuclear weapons from solid materials than gases.
Lithium, the lightest known solid, occurs in nature as the mixture of two isotopes
lithium-6 and lithium-7. Most, 92.58 per cent, of natural lithium is lithium-7—only 7.42
per cent is lithium-6. Lithium-6 is separated from lithium-7 in natural lithium by the
electrolysis of an amalgam of lithium and mercury. Lithium hydroxide is passed through
the lithium-mercury amalgam and the separation of lithium-6 from lithium-7 occurs by
chemical exchange by passing the mixture through exchange columns.
Chemical exchange takes place between the amalgam and the aqueous solution of
lithium hydroxide. The lithium-7 is concentrated in the amalgam phase and the lithium
hydroxide becomes enriched in lithium-6. By repeating the process through each of a
number of columns, the proportion of lithium-6 is typically increased from the natural
proportion to about 85 per cent.
The energy released from such a thermonuclear weapon comes from the fission trigger
and the fusion material. But, if the fusion device is surrounded by a shell of uranium
metal, the high-energy neutrons produced in the fusion process will cause additional
fissions in the uranium shell. This technique can be used to enhance considerably the
explosive power of a thermonuclear weapon. Such a weapon is called a fission-fusionfission
device. On average, about half of the yield from a typical thermonuclear weapon
will come from fission and the other half from fusion.
H-bombs are much more difficult to design than fission nuclear weapons. The problem
is to prevent the fission trigger from blowing the whole weapon apart before enough
fusion material has been ignited to give the required explosive yield. Sufficient energy
has to be delivered to the fusion material to start the thermonuclear reaction in a time
much shorter than the time it takes for the explosion to occur. This means that the energy
must be delivered with a speed approaching the speed of light.
This is achieved using the Teller-Ullman technique, invented by Edward Teller and
Stanislaw Ullman. Rotblat has described the technique used:
The solution to the problem lies in the fact that at the very high temperature of
the fission trigger most of the energy is emitted in the form of X-rays. These Xrays,
travelling with the speed of light, radiate out from the centre and on
reaching the tamper (surrounding the fusion material) are absorbed in it and
The components of nuclear and theronuclear weapons 36
then immediately re-emitted in the form of softer X-rays. By an appropriate
configuration of the trigger and the fusion material it is possible to ensure that
the X-rays reach the latter almost instantaneously. If the fusion material is subdivided
into small portions, each surrounded with a thin absorber made of a
heavy metal, the bulk of the fusion material will simultaneously receive enough
energy to start the thermonuclear reaction before the explosion disperses the
whole assembly.
(Rotblat 1981)
Although essentially weightless, X-rays can exert great pressure. In an H-bomb, the
pressure (several million pounds per square inch) is exerted uniformly on the fusion
material and long enough for the fusion process to work before the material is blown
apart. Because the radiation travels at the speed of light, it arrives at the fusion material
about a millionth of a second before the much slower moving shock wave from the trigger
explosion. The X-rays also arrive before any particles, including neutrons, produced in
the fission explosion. When the shock wave arrives, and blows the assembly apart, the
fusion explosion has occurred.
The fusion process in a thermonuclear weapon is initiated by a so-called ‘sparkplug’, a
thin sub-critical cylindrical rod of weapons-grade U-235 or Pu-239 placed at the centre of
the cylinder of fusion fuel (Hansen 1988). When the fusion fuel has been compressed, by
radiation from the explosion of the fission trigger, neutrons from the trigger penetrate into
the sparkplug. The sparkplug begins to fission and the fission reaction, in the middle of
the highly compressed fusion fuel, initiates the main fusion explosion. A thermonuclear
weapon, therefore, uses two fission explosions—one in the trigger and another in the
sparkplug.
Very large explosive yields have been obtained with thermonuclear weapons.
Typically, each stage of a thermonuclear explosion explodes with a power roughly ten
times that of the preceding stage. If the fission trigger explodes with an explosive yield of
a few tens of kilotonnes, the first fusion stage would explode with a yield of several
hundred kilotonnes, and the second fusion stage, if present, would yield several
megatonnes. For example, the Soviet Union exploded an H-bomb in 1962 with a yield
equal to that of 58 million tonnes of TNT—equivalent to about 3,000 Nagasaki bombs.
This was probably a three-stage device, with a fission trigger which exploded with a
power of several hundred kilotonnes, and two fusion stages. Even higher yields could be
obtained.
The fusion process in a thermonuclear weapon is probably about 30 per cent efficient
so that an explosion equivalent to that of about 25 kt of TNT is produced for each
kilogramme of lithium-6 deuteride in the weapon. A 500-kt weapon would, therefore,
contain about 20 kilogrammes of lithium-6 deuteride.
Having constructed nuclear or thermonuclear weapons is it necessary to test them
before deploying them in the military arsenal?
How nuclear weapons spread 37