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Fission, Fusion

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Nuclear weapons achieve exponentially increasing nuclear chain reactions by different designs, fission and fusion.

Fission bombs, often called atomic bombs, detonate when neutrons bombard the fissile material, uranium or plutonium isotopes, splitting the atoms into lighter elements and releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.

There are two types of fission bombs. One type, a gun-assembly device, uses an explosive propellant to shoot one mass of fissile material into another; the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II was of this type. The other type, an implosion device, uses a chemical explosive to compress plutonium into a critical density to create the chain reaction; the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was of this type.

Fission bombs can release an amount of energy up to the equivalent of about 500,000 tons of the explosive chemical TNT. The fission bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had the power of an estimated 15,000 tons of TNT.

The destructive power of fusion bombs, also known as thermonuclear devices and hydrogen bombs, vastly exceeds that of fission bombs. The United States first exploded an “H-Bomb” in 1952; the Soviet Union, in 1953. The biggest fusion bomb ever detonated — the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba, tested in 1961 — released energy equivalent to an estimated 50,000,000 tons of TNT.

Fusion bombs actually work by both fission and fusion. In a typical two-stage weapon, the fissile materials detonate first to compress and heat the fusion fuels, such as hydrogen isotopes tritium and deuterium, to tens of millions of degrees. Just as in the sun, the chain reaction in the second stage fuses the hydrogen atoms into heavier helium atoms and releases vast amounts of energy in the process.