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A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs , a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits.
The bomb was hailed as a hydrogen bomb, and the truth that it was actually a large fission bomb was kept secret by the British government until the end of the Cold War. [135] [136] An Operational Requirement (OR1142) had been issued in 1955 for a thermonuclear warhead for a medium-range ballistic missile, which became Blue Streak. This was ...
The USSR and United States nuclear weapon stockpiles throughout the Cold War until 2015, with a precipitous drop in total numbers following the end of the Cold War in 1991. Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are eliminated.
In 1957, hydrogen bomb architect Edward Teller and other Livermore weapons scientists proposed a gigawatt-level electrical plant, based on steam generation from 1 megaton bombs dropped every 12 hours into a 1,000 ft cavity. American research on such plants continued throughout the Cold War.
NSC 68 was drafted under the guidance of Paul H. Nitze, Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, 1950–1953.. By 1950, U.S. national security policies required reexamination due to a series of events: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was operational, military assistance for European allies had begun, the Soviet Union had detonated an atomic bomb and ...
The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The R-46 was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The R-46 concept was to launch a very large hydrogen bomb into orbit as a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS). The existence of the system was alluded to in a speech by then Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.
The hydrogen bomb primarily has 2 units: a nuclear bomb, which was the primary unit, and a secondary energy unit. The first stage of the hydrogen bomb resembled the layer-cake design, except the main difference is that the initiation is carried out by a nuclear device, rather than a conventional explosive. [10]