Hydrogen Bomb

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Public knowledge

The Teller–Ulam design was for many years considered one of the top nuclear secrets, and even today it is not discussed in any detail by official publications with origins "behind the fence" of classification. United States Department of Energy (DOE) policy has been, and continues to be, that they do not acknowledge when "leaks" occur, because doing so would acknowledge the accuracy of the supposed leaked information.

Aside from images of the warhead casing (but never of the "physics package" itself), most information in the public domain about this design is regulated to a few terse statements by the DOE and the work of a few individual investigators.

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DOE statements

In 1972 the United States government declassified a statement that "The fact that in thermonuclear (TN) weapons, a fission 'primary' is used to trigger a TN reaction in thermonuclear fuel referred to as a 'secondary'", and in 1979 added, "The fact that, in thermonuclear weapons, radiation from a fission explosive can be contained and used to transfer energy to compress and ignite a physically separate component containing thermonuclear fuel." To this latter sentence they specified that "Any elaboration of this statement will be classified."[18] The only statement which may pertain to the spark plug was declassified in 1991: "Fact that fissile and/or fissionable materials are present in some secondaries, material unidentified, location unspecified, use unspecified, and weapons undesignated." In 1998 the DOE declassified the statement that "The fact that materials may be present in channels and the term 'channel filler,' with no elaboration", which may refer to the polystyrene foam (or an analogous substance).[19]

Whether these statements vindicate some or all of the models presented above is up for interpretation, and official U.S. government releases about the technical details of nuclear weapons have been purposely equivocating in the past (see, e.g., Smyth Report). Other information, such as the types of fuel used in some of the early weapons, has been declassified, though of course precise technical information has not been.

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The Progressive case

Most of the current ideas on the workings of the Teller–Ulam design came into public awareness after the Department of Energy (DOE) attempted to censor a magazine article by U.S. antiweapons activist Howard Morland in 1979 on the "secret of the hydrogen bomb". In 1978, Morland had decided that discovering and exposing this "last remaining secret" would focus attention onto the arms race and allow citizens to feel empowered to question official statements on the importance of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy. Most of Morland's ideas about how the weapon worked were compiled from highly accessible sources—the drawings which most inspired his approach came from none other than the Encyclopedia Americana. Morland also interviewed (often informally) many former Los Alamos scientists (including Teller and Ulam, though neither gave him any useful information), and used a variety of interpersonal strategies to encourage informational responses from them (i.e., asking questions such as "Do they still use spark plugs?" even if he was not aware what the latter term specifically referred to).[20]

Morland eventually concluded that the "secret" was that the primary and secondary were kept separate and that radiation pressure from the primary compressed the secondary before igniting it. When an early draft of the article, to be published in The Progressive magazine, was sent to the DOE after falling into the hands of a professor who was opposed to Morland's goal, the DOE requested that the article not be published, and pressed for a temporary injunction. The DOE argued that Morland's information was (1) likely derived from classified sources, (2) if not derived from classified sources, itself counted as "secret" information under the "born secret" clause of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, and (3) was dangerous and would encourage nuclear proliferation.

Morland and his lawyers disagreed on all points, but the injunction was granted, as the judge in the case felt that it was safer to grant the injunction and allow Morland, et al., to appeal, which they did in United States v. The Progressive (1979).

Through a variety of more complicated circumstances, the DOE case began to wane as it became clear that some of the data they were attempting to claim as "secret" had been published in a students' encyclopedia a few years earlier. After another H-bomb speculator, Chuck Hansen, had his own ideas about the "secret" (quite different from Morland's) published in a Wisconsin newspaper, the DOE claimed that The Progressive case was moot, dropped its suit, and allowed the magazine to publish its article, which it did in November 1979. Morland had by then, however, changed his opinion of how the bomb worked, suggesting that a foam medium (the polystyrene) rather than radiation pressure was used to compress the secondary, and that in the secondary there was a spark plug of fissile material as well. He published these changes, based in part on the proceedings of the appeals trial, as a short erratum in The Progressive a month later.[21] In 1981, Morland published a book about his experience, describing in detail the train of thought which led him to his conclusions about the "secret".[20][22]

Morland's work is interpreted as being at least partially correct because the DOE had sought to censor it, one of the few times they violated their usual approach of not acknowledging "secret" material which had been released; however, to what degree it lacks information, or has incorrect information, is not known with any confidence. The difficulty that a number of nations had in developing the Teller–Ulam design (even when they apparently understood the design, such as with the United Kingdom), makes it somewhat unlikely that this simple information alone is what provides the ability to manufacture thermonuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the ideas put forward by Morland in 1979 have been the basis for all the current speculation on the Teller–Ulam design.

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Variations

There have been a few variations of the Teller–Ulam design suggested by sources claiming to have information from inside of the fence of classification. Whether these are simply different versions of the Teller–Ulam design, or should be understood as contradicting the above descriptions, is up for interpretation.

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Most of what is known to the public today about the Teller–Ulam design comes from a 1979 magazine article. This edition is available online.

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Richard Rhodes' "Ivy Mike" device in Dark Sun

In his 1995 book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, author Richard Rhodes describes in detail the internal components of the "Ivy Mike" Sausage device, based on information obtained from extensive interviews with the scientists and engineers who assembled it. According to Rhodes, though there was polystyrene in the "Mike" device, it was not used as a plasma source — the radiation from the primary itself was enough to compress the secondary. Whether or not this would apply only to the "Mike" device, or the Teller–Ulam design in general, is not known, and potentially casts some doubt onto the role of the foam, and to the exact mechanism of radiation "transport".[23]

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W88 revelations

In 1999 a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News reported that the U.S. W88 nuclear warhead, a small MIRVed warhead used on the Trident II SLBM, had a prolate (egg or watermelon shaped) primary (code-named Komodo) and a spherical secondary (code-named Cursa) inside a specially shaped radiation case (known as the "peanut" for its shape).[24] A story four months later in The New York Times by William Broad[25] reported that in 1995, a supposed double agent from the People's Republic of China delivered information indicating that China knew these details about the W88 warhead, supposedly through espionage.[26] (This line of investigation eventually resulted in the abortive trial of Wen Ho Lee.) If these stories are true, it would explain the reported higher yield of the W88, 475 kilotons, compared with only 300 kilotons for the earlier W87 warhead.

The reentry cones for the two warheads are the same size, 1.75 meters (69 in) long, with a maximum diameter of 55 cm. (22 in).[27] The higher yield of the W88 implies a larger secondary, which produces most of the yield. Putting the secondary, which is heavier than the primary, in the wider part of the cone allows it to be larger, but it also moves the center of mass aft, potentially causing aerodynamic stability problems during reentry. Dead-weight ballast must be added to the nose to move the center of mass forward. The W88 is thus heavier than the W87 in two ways, with a heavier secondary which adds to yield and with ballast which adds nothing to yield.

To make the primary small enough to fit into the narrow part of the cone, its bulky insensitive high explosive charges must be replaced with more compact "non-insensitive" high explosives which are more hazardous to handle. The higher yield of the W88, which is the last new warhead produced by the United States, thus comes at a price of higher warhead weight and higher workplace hazard.[28]

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In the W87 warhead, the heavier secondary (top) is placed forward of the lighter primary (bottom) to promote aerodynamic stability during reentry.

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In the W88 warhead, the primary (top) and secondary (bottom) have switched positions, to allow the secondary to be larger than in the otherwise similar W87.

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Bibliography

Basic principles

    * "Engineering and Design of Nuclear Weapons" from Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapons FAQ.
    * Chuck Hansen, U.S. nuclear weapons: The secret history (Arlington, TX: Aerofax, 1988). ISBN 0-517-56740-7
    * Chuck Hansen, The Swords of Armageddon: U.S. nuclear weapons development since 1945 (Sunnyvale, CA: Chukelea Publications, 1995). [2]
    * Dalton E. G. Barroso, The physics of nuclear explosives, in Portuguese. (São Paulo, Brazil: Editora Livraria da Física, 2009). ISBN 978-85-7861-016-6

History

    * DeGroot, Gerard, "The Bomb: A History of Hell on Earth", London: Pimlico, 2005. ISBN 0-7126-7748-8
    * Peter Galison and Barton Bernstein, "In any light: Scientists and the decision to build the Superbomb, 1942-1954" Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences Vol. 19, No. 2 (1989): 267-347.
    * German A. Goncharov, "American and Soviet H-bomb development programmes: historical background" (trans. A.V. Malyavkin), Physics—Uspekhi Vol. 39, No. 10 (1996): 1033-1044. Available online (PDF)
    * David Holloway, Stalin and the bomb: The Soviet Union and atomic energy, 1939-1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). ISBN 0-300-06056-4
    * Richard Rhodes, Dark sun: The making of the hydrogen bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). ISBN 0-684-80400-X
    * S.S. Schweber, In the shadow of the bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the moral responsibility of the scientist (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-691-04989-0
    * Gary Stix, "Infamy and honor at the Atomic Café: Edward Teller has no regrets about his contentious career", Scientific American (October 1999): 42-43.

Analyzing fallout

    * Lars-Erik De Geer, "The radioactive signature of the hydrogen bomb" Science and Global Security Vol. 2 (1991): 351-363. Available online (PDF)
    * Yulii Borisovich Khariton and Yuri Smirnov, The Khariton version Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 49, No. 4 (May 1993): 20-31.

[edit] Notes

   1. ^ From National Public Radio Talk of the Nation, November 8, 2005, Siegfried Hecker of Los Alamos, "the hydrogen bomb – that is, a two-stage thermonuclear device, as we referred to it – is indeed the principal part of the US arsenal, as it is of the Russian arsenal."
   2. ^ a b "Complete List of All U.S. Nuclear Weapons". 1 October 1997. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
   3. ^ Hansen, Chuck (1988). U.S. nuclear weapons: The secret history. Arlington, TX: Aerofax. ISBN 0-517-56740-7.
   4. ^ Hansen, Chuck (1995). The Swords of Armageddon: U.S. nuclear weapons development since 1945. Sunnyvale, CA: Chukelea Publications. http://www.uscoldwar.com/.
   5. ^ "Figure 5 - Thermonuclear Warhead Components". http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/fig05.gif. Retrieved 27 August 2010.  A cleaned up version: "British H-bomb posted on the internet by Greenpeace". Federation of American Scientists. http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/morland_image037.gif. Retrieved 27 August 2010.
   6. ^ "Improved Security, Safety & Manufacturability of the Reliable Replacement Warhead", NNSA March 2007.
   7. ^ A 1976 drawing which depicts an interstage that absorbs and re-radiates X-rays. From Howard Morland, "The Article", Cardozo Law Review, March 2005, p 1374.
   8. ^ [Fogbank] Speculation on Fogbank, Arms Control Wonk
   9. ^ a b "Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions 4.4.3.3 The Ablation Process". Version 2.04: 20 February 1999. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-4.html#Nfaq4.4.3.3. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
  10. ^ a b "Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions 4.4.4 Implosion Systems". Version 2.04: 20 February 1999. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-4.html#Nfaq4.4.4. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
  11. ^ "The B-41 (Mk-41) Bomb - High yield strategic thermonuclear bomb". 21 October 1997. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/B41.html. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
  12. ^ "Photograph of a W47 warhead" (JPG). http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W47.jpg. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
  13. ^ Holloway, David (1994). Stalin and the bomb: The Soviet Union and atomic energy, 1939-1956. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 299. ISBN 0-300-06056-4.
  14. ^ Times of Indiahttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/New-Article/articleshow/4941081.cms
  15. ^ India tested H-bomb, says New Scientist
  16. ^ "?". Rediff.com. http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jul/27bomb1.htm. Retrieved 27 August 2010.
  17. ^ Arms Control Today May 1998, pp. 7-13; Terry C. Wallace, "The May 1998 India and Pakistan Nuclear Tests"
  18. ^ emphasis in original
  19. ^ Restricted Data Declassification Decisions, 1946 to the present, Volume 7. United States Department of Energy. January 2001. http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/rdd-7.html.
  20. ^ a b Morland, Howard (1981). The secret that exploded. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-51297-9.
  21. ^ "The H-Bomb Secret: How we got it and why we’re telling it". The Progressive 43 (11). November 1979. http://progressive.org/?q=node/2252.
  22. ^ Alexander De Volpi, Jerry Marsh, Ted Postol, and George Stanford (1981). Born secret: the H-bomb, the Progressive case and national security. New York: Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-025995-2.
  23. ^ Rhodes, Richard (1995). Dark sun: The making of the hydrogen bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80400-X.
  24. ^ Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman (2001). A convenient spy: Wen Ho Lee and the politics of nuclear espionage. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2378-0.
  25. ^ Broad, William J. (1999-09-07). "Spies versus sweat, the debate over China's nuclear advance". The New York Times: 1.
  26. ^ Christopher Cox, chairman (1999). Report of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China. http://www.house.gov/coxreport/. , esp. Ch. 2, "PRC Theft of U.S. Thermonuclear Warhead Design Information".
  27. ^ "The W88 Warhead - Intermediate yield strategic SLBM MIRV warhead". 1 October 1997. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W88.html. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
  28. ^ Morland, Howard (February 2003). The holocaust bomb: A question of time. http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/morland.html.

[Theotris]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/h-bomb.htm

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Teller.html

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq3.html

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4.html

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-4.html

http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=science/Nuclear+Weapons+Design

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/interview/index.html

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/cardozo.html

http://progressive.org/?q=node/2252

http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=warfare/Hydrogen+Bomb

http://www.mcis.soton.ac.uk/Site_Files/pdf/nuclear_history/Working_Paper_No_5.pdf