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The First Superbomb Project — the United States

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Britain and the H-Bomb

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Abstract

Long before the first atomic bomb — or even the laboratory at Los Alamos — existed, some American scientists were already thinking about a superbomb a thousand times more powerful. In the summer of 1942 a group of theoretical physicists gathered at Berkeley;1 they included Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, Robert Serber, Emil Konopinski, John H van Vleck and Edward Teller. They concluded that a much more powerful reaction than nuclear fission might be produced by a thermonuclear fusion of deuterium. Konopinski then made a suggestion, crucially significant later, that the ignition temperature could be lowered by adding tritium (a heavier and more reactive isotope of hydrogen). The T-D thermonuclear reaction, Bethe said, would release nearly five times as much energy as the D-D reaction. But tritium was very difficult and extremely costly to manufacture. This idea was not followed up immediately.

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Notes and References

  1. R. G. Hewlett and O. E. Anderson, The New World: a History of the US Atomic Energy Commission, Vol. I 1939–1946, p. 104, R. Rhodes, Dark Sun, p. 248; D. Hawkins et al., Project Y: The Los Alamos Story Part I, p. 86; L. Hoddeson et al., Critical Assembly: a Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945, 1993, pp. 45–6.

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Authors
  1. Lorna Arnold
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  2. Katherine Pyne
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© 2001 The Ministry of Defence

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Arnold, L., Pyne, K. (2001). The First Superbomb Project — the United States. In: Britain and the H-Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599772_2

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