X-Nico

unusual facts about thermonuclear



B41

B41 nuclear bomb, a thermonuclear weapon deployed by the United States in the early 1960s

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

More recently, India and the United States signed an agreement to enhance nuclear cooperation between the two countries, and for India to participate in an international consortium on fusion research, ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) so there are signs that the west wants to bring India in the Nuclear mainstream.

Enzmann starship

The ball of frozen deuterium powered thermonuclear powered pulse propulsion units, similar to Project Orion engines.

ET.317

Since the Reggie secondary manufactured in the UK from British-owned materials was a copy of the US W-59, by implication, the W-59 thermonuclear weapon deployed in some Minuteman I ICBMs also used the fission-fusion-fission process.

Last Human

The Earth World President, John Milhous Nixon has learned that thermonuclear tests conducted too close to the surface of the sun have fatally weakened the star's structure, thus causing an eventual decay that will see the entire solar system die in four hundred thousand years - which will be very bad for the economy, and Nixon's re-election prospects.

National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center

NERSC was founded in 1974 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, then called the Controlled Thermonuclear Research Computer Center or CTRCC and consisting of a Control Data Corporation 6600 computer.

Neutron activation

The Castle Bravo accident, in which the thermonuclear bomb test at Enewetak Atoll in 1954 exploded with 2.5 times the expected yield, was caused by the unexpectedly high probability of this reaction.

Project Emily

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 59 of the RAF missiles, with their W49 1.44 megaton thermonuclear warheads, were brought to operational readiness.

Single Integrated Operational Plan

In What Ifs? of American History, edited by Robert Cowley, one essay ("The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust", by Robert L. O'Connell) outlines a scenario where the Cuban Missile Crisis leads, via miscalculations, incompetence and trigger-happiness on both sides, to a two-day thermonuclear war, with horrific results in terms of both overkill and long-term effects on the world.

Sylwester Kaliski

There is a rumour, that professor has been killed by Soviet KGB, as he headed Polish clandestine program of developing thermonuclear device intended for military use, which was started on order of highest level of Polish communistic party, in opposition to soviet dominance over Poland and other Middle and Eastern European countries.

Violet Club

One track led to an intermediate design, the so-called Type A thermonuclear design, similar to the Alarm Clock and layer cake hybrid designs of other nuclear powers; although these designs are now regarded as large boosted fission weapons, and no longer regarded as thermonuclear weapons that derive a very large part of their energy from a fusion reaction, designated by the British as Type B, but as hybrids.

In 1953, shortly after the Americans tested a thermonuclear weapon in 1952, followed by the Soviets with Joe 4, and before the UK government took a decision in July 1954 to develop a thermonuclear weapon, the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston was asked about the possibilities for a very large pure fission bomb with a yield of one megaton.

Z machine

Any country developing thermonuclear weapons has its own Z machine, but those not using water lines had long rising pulses (for example 800ns in the Sphinx, the French machine at Gramat).


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