What do hydrogen bombs do

Learning Objective Recognize the components of a hydrogen bomb. Key Points A thermonuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon design that uses the heat generated by a fission bomb to compress a nuclear fusion stage. The nuclear fusion in an H-bomb releases neutrons much faster than a fission reaction, and these neutrons then bombard the remaining fissile fuel, causing it to undergo fission much more rapidly.

Show Sources Boundless vets and curates high-quality, openly licensed content from around the Internet. Licenses and Attributions. In comparison, a hydrogen bomb is about fusion — fusing atomic nuclei together to combine into bigger ones. A hydrogen bomb, or a thermonuclear bomb, contains a fission weapon within it but there is a two-stage reaction process. It uses the energy from a primary nuclear fission to set off a subsequent fusion reaction.

The energy released by fusion is three to four times greater than the energy released by fission, giving the "hydrogen" bomb, or H-bomb, more power. The name comes from the fact that it uses a fusion of tritium and deuterium, hydrogen isotopes. Essentially, an H-bomb is only limited by the amount of hydrogen within it and can be made as powerful as its builder wishes it to be, making it a big threat should a perceived "rogue" state like North Korea develop one.

The U. Then, in and , it detonated hydrogen bombs in the Marshall Islands. In , the U. This is typically done with the isotopes of hydrogen deuterium and tritium which fuse together to form Helium atoms.

The first hydrogen bomb was exploded on 1st November, at the small island of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. Its destructive power was several megatons of TNT. The blast produced a light brighter than a thousand suns and a heatwave felt 50 kilometres away. The Soviet Union detonated a hydrogen bomb in the megaton range in August The US exploded a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb on 1st March, It had a fireball of 4.

If one of these bombs were ever used, the effect would be catastrophic. In comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, caused destruction within a radius of roughly 5 miles 8 km. Only five countries have been confirmed to have built hydrogen bombs: the United States, Russia, France, China and the United Kingdom, but recent claims by North Korea suggest that a sixth country may be on the list. International political tension begs the question: What does a hydrogen bomb do?

Hydrogen bombs function like nuclear bombs, like those dropped during World War II, only on a much larger scale. Few hydrogen bombs have been tested, and long-term effects are still under investigation — but evidence found at hydrogen bomb test sites at Bikini Atoll and Novaya Zemlya suggest that environmental after-effects can last for decades.

All nuclear weapons rely on the process of nuclear fission, in which an atom or nucleus is broken apart into two pieces, releasing incredible amounts of energy. The core difference between atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs specifically is that the latter use a combination of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion — where two atoms are forcibly fused together at high temperatures and pressures — to produce an exponentially larger explosion.

Hydrogen bombs as they exist today are multistage explosives: They actually use atomic fission bombs as the trigger to induce fusion, so they're essentially two bombs built on top of each other. Hydrogen bombs are a subclass of atomic bombs for this reason.