How do hydrogen bombs work? - Real Chemistry 

In the video I say "Mass is destroyed" which has led to no small bit of controversy. This is not the standard way to phrase what happens - its more common to say "mass is converted into energy." Why would we not use the word "destroyed"? The main reason, I think, is because it sounds like it contradicts the law of conservation of mass. However, the law of conservation of mass really includes the possibility of interconversion of mass to energy. So where we had mass, it is no more - but this doesn't violate the conservation of mass/energy.

There is a cool story about the 'plastic' used in the making of the bomb. When the bombs were found to be approaching the end of their life and they wanted to overhaul them, the foam used was lost to history and they had to reinvent the foam. The first batches ended up failing due to the foam being too pure! They found an impurity that was needed to make the foam work, and it was added into the foam and then it worked!

The nutty part about the nuclear stuff: *EVERYTHING* described in this video happens after the the primary H.E. ignites, but before that chemical explosion blows the hohlraum & bomb casing apart. Even with the explosive lensing, quite a bit of that blast force will travel outward, but what compresses the fission primary is the detonation wave, which is moving at ~5km/s or higher, depending on the particular H.E. being used. But the relativistic speeds at which the nuclear stuff happens easily overtakes the chemical blast. Just bonkers.

Thanks for the good idea

Hey this is by far the best video I found explaining hydrogen bombs. I watched about 3 minutes of 2 different videos then found this one. First video I felt that actually taught me something. You earned my sub! Cheers from St. Louis Missouri

Good introductory video, but I'd like to add some details. Fission devices have produced 0-500kt yields. That 20kt figure is arbitrary. Thermonuclear weapons have produced 1-56800kt. Thermonuclear primaries can be pure uranium, pure plutonium or uranium/plutonium composite. Weapons with cores of all these materials have been produced. Devices have been demonstrated that use pure fusion secondaries. The fusion fuel for all but a very few early devices is lithium deuteride. Lithium isotopic compositions of 7.59% Li6 (natural) to 95% Li6 have been used. The tamper need not be uranium 238. When uranium is used, isotopic compositions of 0.3% U-235 to 37.5% U-235 have been used. Lead, lead-bismuth eutectic and gold are also known to be used. It's not technically accurate to speak of x-rays being reflected off the hohlraum. They penetrate into the hohlraum, deposit their energy, heating up a thin inner layer of the hohlraum, which then re-radiates thermal radiation. The prime mechanism by which the primary's radiant energy is converted into internal energy of the compressed secondary is ablation. A thin layer of the secondary pusher is superheated to a plasma, just as the hohlraum is, this plasma is of higher pressure than the deeper cold pusher and interstage foam plasma, thus it expands. This produces a recoil reaction imploding the secondary. Once the radiation diffusion wave has penetrated some distance (on the order of 1mm) into the pusher, it becomes subsonic and hydrodynamic separation occurs producing a classical shock which initially impulses the secondary pusher, which is then followed by that produced by the ablation pressure. The interstage radiation pressure and that produced by the sparkplug do not compress the fusion fuel simultaenously. The secondary is impulsed by the interstage, then undergoes freefall implosion, compressed the cold fusion fuel, then the sparkplug, initiating fission, which heats the compressed fusion fuel. Initially, the wave from the sparkplug into the fusion fuel will be in the form of a supersonic radiation diffusion wave, thus it will not compress the fusion fuel, I've yet to run the numbers to determine whether hydrodynamic separation ever occurs in the fusion fuel.

Minor nit - When the fissile nucleus splits, it does more than "falls apart". The fission fragments are driven apart by electrostatic repulsion. This happens at relativistic speeds, resulting in millions of degrees of heating.

There is no limit to the blast yield of a thermonuclear bomb, it's just a matter of incorporating enough fusion fuel and stages to achieve the intended yield.

hats of man. such technicality at such ease.

Very easy to take in the information, unlike other videos.

Thank you for explaining this in a very accessible way. Really enjoyed it :-)

Great video and explanation, without any background in this i could understand it perfectly. Cheers

best explanation i could find, thanks

Thank you so much, i just bought mine and i was trying to figure out how it works!

Three phase bomb is called "przekładaniec", it has layers. Inside is standard fission material, outside too. That middle layer has pressure of inner and outer layer releasing enormous mass of enrgy, forces it to fission. Squeze fission material by two nuklear loads is enough to make it work. Then goes boom.

This video has personal relevance. Back in 79 the Progressive Magazine published an article on how H-bombs worked. The government went to court and got an order preventing publication - first case of priority restraint of the press. As part of the ACLU’s defense of the Progressive I went to Los Alamos with a friend who was an independent expert and discovered declassified documents from the 1950s that were far more revealing than what the Progressive was going to publish. The discovery of the documents in the public access section of the Los Alamos Lab library blew up the government’s case. It was pretty tense when we bought a copy of the Washington Post at the airport and the front page article about it referenced hit the“FBI investigating violations the Atomic Secrets Act” and “20-life”. A long flight to say the least. In the event nothing happened to us as the documents were clearly declassified. Los Alamos got in trouble and they even had Senate hearings about it. Now this is on RU-vid.

Great video thanks man

I read long ago that Fe (Iron) is the most stable nucleus, so fusing towards Fe or splitting down to it is the way to go. Yields may vary.

The explanation makes these weapons all the more terrifying.

I liked the graph at the end

The outer shell of thermonuclear weapons could also be made of U-238, which confines the detonation of the primary and secondary stages for just a little longer. In the process, U-238 nuclei capture fast neutrons from the first two stages and fissions itself, greatly magnifying the blast a creating most of the nuclear fallout from the blast.

Thank you for this 🙂

Brilliant

Ahh those BOSCH Plutonium spark plugs! I'm gonna swap my NGK Iridiums out for some of those.

we're beating oppenheimer with this one $$

Always wondered how the 2nd stage did not get physically blown up prior to criticality. Then, someone described how the rays travel at the speed and "outran" the physical force of the first stage. Hopefully, that was not an oversimplification.

I believe Little Boy was deployed first. Subscribed anyway.

Something to add is that there’s tritium gas in the hollow center of the plutonium spark plug which undergoes fusion and when two tritiums atoms fuse, you get helium 4 and two neutrons which are absorbed into the plutonium causing it to undergo fission. Neutrons from the fissioning spark plug are absorbed into lithium 6 where it decays into an alpha particle and and a tritium atom which fuses with the deuterium atom it was bonded making helium 4 and reading neutrons which as you stated are absorbed into the uranium tamper causing it to undergo fission. This energy reader by fissioning tamper accelerates the fusion process.

I have a question, is the weak nuclear force related to beta decay? Thank you!

1:08 I'm pretty sure that nuclear material has to become "super critical" in order to detonate. All nuclear reactors are kept in a controlled critical state to produce heat.

For thermonuclear weapon which is used uranium or plutonium

How many minimum KT fission bomb does a fusion bomb require? I have been looking for that data and found no reference

This may be a stupid question, but how does the actual vessel withstand the fusion pressures and temperatures for long enough to have any decent energy output? Surely the vessel would be destroyed in like 3 nano seconds?

The singular of nuclei is nucleus.

Lithium 6 and deuterium of some form.....is the specific fission reaction materials, not sure how deuterium can processed in a solid but the fission works mathematically if I had no errors....

I know it’s such a simple concept and a stupid question but the bit that still confuses me is how do you actually compress the plutonium rather than accidentally just blow the core up into tiny pieces? It just seems like you would need such a specific size if explosion and timing to make it all work. But they were barely able to enrich the plutonium back there at any decent rate so finding that specific size / timing would feel either like a shot in the dark or so insanely expensive and time consuming. Or do I just not have the right idea about timing / explosives? I’m probably wrong because the fact they can accidentally compress core halves just by dropping it ontop of the other half and kill everybody in the room.

The "yellow foam" is actually called "FOGBANK" and it's clear. It's highly classified but more than likely used as a plasma to aid in reaction.

6th standard physics/ chemistry: Energy gets transferred through 3 methods. Convection, convention and radiation. The third one is the basis for the true super, because it constitutes the major component in the explosion of a fission bomb.

Why don't they surround the lithium or duterium with a number of small U235 devices that would cause a fission bomb implosion of the fusion material? There's still be the concentration of the X-Ray but also the high temperature and pressure needed to bring about fusion? If they surrounded the fission bombs with 6ft thick of steel it works concentrate the x-rays and pressure for the few extra nanoseconds to start the fusion. It would be a heavy bomb but i understand that H-bombs are not nearly as efficient as they could be. A spark plug design seems wasteful of the energy.

be the first guy to make a video on the ablation pressure theory! no one ever goes into detail on how exactly the secondary is compressed

thanks this will help me with my school project!!!!!

I'll start thinking about how you creat fission-fusion bomb more powerful than Tsar Bomba

Chemistry is insane

The “plastic foam” idea was not a proposal but an amateur guess by activist Howard Morland in the 1980s - it has long since been discredited. Trick ideas as to what causes the compression might not be necessary as X-Rays from the primary are so intense they shoot out with the density of lead.

Fission is not the “falling” apart of atoms, it’s the forceful splitting of atoms within unstable elements and their isotopes, and no energy or mass is destroyed or created in fission or fusion reactions, these weapons are prime examples of mass converting to energy ie E=mC2 Oh and the hydrogen bomb uses lithium deuteride which is a deuterium compound aka hydrogen and serves as a dry fuel that’s stable at room temp and pressure

0:44 How is mass destroyed?

Teknık resım ,tasarım , dizayn öğrenen herkez bu 2d resımlerden bile cok rahat bombanın benzerını ve daha etkın tesırı olan modelini tasarlayabilir 3d metal print metodu ile daha hafif modeli bile yapmak mumkun , Umarım Ai lara bomba tasarlatmaya çalışmazsınız ,neyse biliyorsunuzdur zaten basit birşey

I got lost, why is called Hydrogen bomb? I did not see that element inside the bomb.

So using foam which is a petrochemical derivative means that the H bomb is really a souped up petrol bomb.

I always thought it was funny that Sakharov used styrofoam to create plasma in his weapon. You can't get away from the stuff, even in doomsday machines!

I feel like a cluster of green bombs would work better than the tsar bomb or castle bravo

Old tech..when do we get anti matter bombs?

Tsar Bomba is terrifying and unbelievable.

If you want to build your own hydrogen bomb, Amazon has bulk plutonium and some lithium products. 🙂

The 1950s British Royal Air Force called their Hydrogen bombs 'Buckets of instant sunshine'.

Thanks for the tutorial I just made a hydrogen bomb and shows my friends at school

Iterrestinging

I like how you say "plutonium fission bombs were one of the first nuclear bombs developed, and one of the first ones deployed in WW2." Idk I just find it funny that it was the 2nd of only 2 nuclear bombs deployed in ww2, and no other nuclear bombs were ever used offensively again, so it was the last nuclear bomb ever deployed. I just find humor in strange shit I guess.

But of a misnomer calling it a hydrogen bomb …. seems from this that hydrogen plays just a small part. Thermonuclear describes it better.

You're telling me that hydrogen bombs uses a similar chain reaction that the sun uses.💀

"Ignites the plutonium spark plug". What the hell does that mean?

循環してるから

Lithium doesn't become hydrogen, it's a compound of Li6D2 (lithium deuteride) and a carrier for deuterium.

Lithium deuteride I believe - not just lithium.

i know there is better information in the comments. Most plutonium bombs use also fusion (booster) thats why this "fission and fusion bombs" are not correct there is nearly always both of them involved. There is no way someone could built a bomb with your help, use the information from the comments and make another better one.

alright so theres this game powder toy, and i wanted to make a reallistic hydrogen bomb in it, thanks!

03:15 😆👍

Interesting video but I have to point out that this is not chemistry, it's physics.

why did i think an atomic bomb was more devastating than a hydrogen bomb? 😅

Of COURSE we’re not GLAD about this. Do you think we citizens are insane?

where is the hydrogen ?

Tsar Bomba, roughly 57,000 kilotons, 1963.....

Bro really said it destroys mass

Nuclei is the plural. One nucleus fuses with another nucleus. Small detail, kind of important.

"a" is the *singular* indefinite article, whereas "nuclei" is a *plural* noun. There's no such thing as "a nuclei".

Not sure what type of fusion bomb you are talking about, but fusion bombs use a series of reflectors and a fusing fuel usually lithium 6. The uranium-238 is usually the aero body of the MIRV re-entry vehicle. When Edward Teller did his calculations for the fuel required in the form of lithium-6 he considered the overburden of lithium-7 as nothing more than that, ballast. The Castle Bravo blast at Enewitok Atoll was Americas first nuclear accident. Tellers calculations predicted a blast between 4-7 Megatons, Castle Bravo went almost 14-15 Megatons. It seems the lithium-7 was a better fuel than the lithium-6. By this time Edward Tellers security clearance had been revoked and he was not allowed to attend the shot. Instead, he sat in the USGS lab at Berkeley and calculated the yield from what was recorded by the seismographs, time, distance, amplitude, all that good physics stuff. He knew something had gone terrible wrong and that the calculated yield was nowhere near what had actually happened. The before and after pictures of the Enewitok Atoll were evidence of the power of thermonuclear weapons.

you're only 99.9% wrong. try ten MILLION tons.

I HATE the way bad teachers use our and we... Now Our 8:29 bomb is... Now we are ready.... I have nothing to do with it I'm trying to learn it from you so we and our is lame so many crappy teachers

Me beeing a smartass: This isn't real chemistry actually nothing is because it's all physics if you see were im coming from

OK so I only watched less than a minute of this because you WRONGLY stated "MASS IS DESTROYED". The law of conservation of mass states "matter can neither be created or destroyed".

don't try this at home

This explanation contains the same typical errors as almost all similar materials. Fission only produces a temperature of a few million K, but D-T fusion (and D-D especially!) requires a much higher temperature, about 100 million K. So neither the first stage nor the second stage fission spark plug will NOT produce a high enough temperature to start fusion. Because if that were the case, the Soviets could have easily put together a hydrogen bomb and not tortured themselves with it for years. And they tried it, they put D-Li material in the center of the nuke, around the nuke, etc., but none of it worked because the fission does NOT create enough high temperature to trigger fusion. The principle of the hydrogen bomb is completely different. The spark plug is needed to create high enough energy (1-2 MeV) neutrons to trigger some fusion when they collide with D and Li nucleus (which then produce a high enough energy T nucleus). And the X-ray from the first phase together with the tamper (around the fusion material) are needed to compress the fusion feed material enough so that once the fusion reaction starts, the exothermic runaway can't blow the D-Li-T plasma apart until most of the fusion is complete. (Little Boy, for example, is so poorly efficient because it blows itself apart as soon as the chain reaction starts.)

4:12 interesting thing to say, since another kind of terrorists already have built nuclear bombs and they already have used/tested it twice on heavily populated areas in 1945.

When i was a kid I was fascinated with nuclear physics and everytime i used a knife i was afraid I'd split an atom and blow myself up.

The fusion fuel is lithium deuteride, not lithium

That hole is real and it reacts differently on land just a hot spot for 2 to 3 months look in the mirror 🪞