implosion weapon

They are also considerably heavier, and much smaller than conventional implosion weapons.

A few weeks later a Fat Man implosion weapon was dropped on Nagasaki.

To achieve a large explosive yield, a linear implosion weapon needs somewhat more material, about 13 kilograms.

Linear implosion weapons, requiring 2-3 times more plutonium, are proportionally more expensive.

The use of uranium-235 in an implosion weapon instead of the inefficient gun type Little Boy was an obvious development.

He watched an implosion weapon that was detonated in the Trinity test in July 1945.

However, the earliest implosion weapons had pits so close to criticality that accidental detonation with some nuclear yield was a concern.

Linear-implosion weapons have much lower efficiency due to low pressure, and require two to three times more nuclear-material than conventional implosion weapons.

The core of an implosion weapon - the fissile material and any reflector or tamper bonded to it - is known as the pit.

In a nuclear implosion weapon, the explosives crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, initiating the nuclear explosion.

Fuchs had been intimately involved in the development of the implosion weapon, and passed on detailed cross-sections of the Trinity device to his Soviet contacts.

The neutron output per kiloton is then 10-15 times greater than for a pure fission implosion weapon or for a strategic warhead like a W87 or W88.

Linear implosion weapons could use tampers or reflectors, but the overall diameter of the fissile material plus tamper/reflector increases compared to the volume required for an untamped, unreflected pit.

In-flight pit insertion Neither of these effects is likely with implosion weapons since there is normally insufficient fissile material to form a critical mass without the correct detonation of the lenses.

From reports of successful experiments with "flying plates" in the seized weapons design documents, experts have concluded that Iraq was trying to build the kind of implosion weapon the United States developed around 1948.

Two new groups were created at Los Alamos to develop the implosion weapon, X (for explosives) Division headed by George Kistiakowsky and G (for gadget) Division under Robert Bacher.

Since implosion weapons can be designed that will achieve yields in this range even if neutrons are present at the moment of criticality, fusion boosting allows the manufacture of efficient weapons that are immune to predetonation.

At Lavrenty Beria's insistence, the RDS-1 bomb was designed as an implosion weapon similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan; RDS-1 also had a solid plutonium core.

With an implosion weapon, a solid (or, in later designs, hollow) sphere of plutonium is compressed to a high density with explosive lenses-a technically more daunting task than the simple gun-type design, but necessary to use plutonium for weapons purposes.