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From: ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Nur Iskandar Taib)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Question about Nuclear Weapons
Message-ID: <1990Nov1.024212.11044@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 1 Nov 90 02:42:12 GMT
References: <1990Oct23.190943.7623@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct26.021043.27122@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct29.032600.10035@cbnews.att.com>
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From: ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Nur Iskandar Taib)
>A fusion device is triggered by a fission device.  X-rays from the fission
>compress the tritium in a small target capsule.  This was, I believe, the
>key idea contributed by Dr. Teller:  radiative compression.

I remeber seeing a diagram of a contemporary 
fission bomb. An interesting detail was an 
added jacket of U-238, which normally doesn't
spontaneously fission, but which does when
bombarded by fast neutrons from the primary
U-235 core.

Another diagram showed a hydrogen bomb. It 
contained a fission bomb, and Lithium Hydride
or Deuteride (a solid) as the fuel for the 
fusion reaction. I thionk this was in one of 
the Time-Life illustrated books.

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