When was the first thermonuclear bomb made

There is no limit on the yield of this weapon. The scientific community split over the issue of building a hydrogen bomb. Edward Teller , who had explored the idea of a 'super' during the Manhattan Project, supported its development. Men like J. Robert Oppenheimer , Enrico Fermi , and I.

Rabi opposed its development. An American crash programme under Teller was ready to drop the first H-bomb ever launched from an aircraft in May The First Hydrogen Bomb.

The first US airdrop of a thermonuclear bomb happened on May 20th, Cold War. At the time, David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, had strong reservations about pursuing the "Super" or thermonuclear bomb.

Greenewalt, President of E. Because of the increasing range of Soviet aircraft, the Commission ruled out expanding Hanford but preferred distant sites in the South and Ohio River region.

Thus began the vast expansion of the nuclear weapons complex that eventually had operations in some thirty-two states. In addition to the research and development of fission weapons during the Manhattan Project, theoretical work on the hydrogen bomb had also begun.

In the early 20th century it was recognized that stars probably obtained their enormous output of energy from some sort of nuclear process. During the s, Hans Bethe investigated this phenomenon and suggested that the sun and other stars derived their energy from a set of thermonuclear reactions that took place under enormously high pressures and temperatures believed to prevail in the center of the stars.

However, many believed that these conditions were impossible to recreate on earth and, as a result, few scientists had given much thought to producing such reactions in a laboratory. The advent of the atomic bomb dramatically altered the prospects for producing a hydrogen bomb. At the center of an exploding fission bomb, temperatures exceeding ,, degrees are produced, and so it was realized that at least one of the conditions necessary for igniting a thermonuclear reaction was possible.

In , after creating the first nuclear chain reaction on earth at the Met Lab in Chicago, Enrico Fermi supposed that the fission process that occurred within an atomic bomb could be used to ignite the same sort of thermonuclear reaction that took place inside the center of the sun. He speculated that reactions involving deuterons, the nuclei of the naturally occurring heavy form of hydrogen, would react explosively together under the enormous temperatures created during an atomic explosion and would produce helium and huge amounts of energy.

When Los Alamos was established, the exploration of the hydrogen bomb was among the original objectives. However, because the development of fission bombs turned out to be more difficult than expected, their development required and received the full attention of the Laboratory. Nonetheless, a small group of theoretical physicists under the direction of Edward Teller made a substantial effort to explore the prospects of a thermonuclear bomb during the war.

In the spring of , the physicists who had remained at Los Alamos after the war had ended once again took up the study of how thermonuclear reactions might be produced on earth. The research soon branched out into two distinct lines. One such line explored the comparatively simple objective of igniting a relatively small mass of thermonuclear fuel by means of the energy produced in a relatively large fission explosion--what would later become known as "boosting" or the "booster principle".

The other line of research had the much more difficult task of igniting a relatively large mass of thermonuclear fuel by means of a relatively small fission explosion. A report on the status of physicists' understanding of the thermonuclear process as of spring was published in June of that year and was titled "Report of Conference on the Super". Also in attendance was Dr. Emil Klaus Fuchs who, as it was later learned, was passing on what he knew about atomic research to the Soviet Union.

The report judged that the theoretical design submitted to the conference was on the whole "workable" and that the development of a hydrogen bomb was in fact feasible. However, the report also concluded that considerable resources would be needed to develop the Super Bomb and there was no estimates of how much the project would cost or how long it would take to succeed. Work on the "Super" progressed slowly from to , mainly because scientists working on the project still could not determine how to investigate the thermonuclear reaction process in bulk in the laboratory.

In fact, the only way to study and test the fusion process in even a small mass of fuel was to subject it to the extreme heat and enormous energy output of a full scale nuclear explosion. These types of experiments proved both difficult and expensive. As a result, most physicists at Los Alamos devoted their time to improving and increasing the efficiency and yield of fission bombs, which were much easier to test on a laboratory scale.

When the White House publicly announced that the Soviet Union had indeed exploded their own atomic weapon known as JOE-1 on September 23, , discussions surrounding the proposal to build the superbomb immediately intensified. The Soviet nuclear test shocked the world.

Many of the top physicists who had worked on the Manhattan Project believed that it would be at least five years before the Soviets could build their own atomic bomb. Both Harry Truman and Major General Leslie Groves had estimated that it would take several decades for the Russians to test a nuclear device. The Soviet nuclear test in August , coupled with the "fall" of China to Communism later that year, struck fear in many Americans.

The perceived balance of power that had existed between the Western countries and the Communist Bloc since World War II seemed to have radically shifted in the Communists' favor. All of this raised a very serious pair of questions: What should the American response be, and how should the United States go about achieving it? Some, including Edward Teller, E. Lawrence, and Luis Alvarez, believed that building the hydrogen bomb was the best way to counter the new Soviet threat and reclaim the advantage in the nuclear arms race.

Others, including Robert Oppenheimer, James B. Conant, and David E. Lilienthal, believed that the hydrogen bomb was a weapon of mass genocide even more so than the atomic bomb and its development would ultimately threaten the future of the human race. The debate over whether or not to build the super would be played out in the last months of and Truman's decision in January would drastically alter the course of the Cold War.

As the debate over whether or not to build the hydrogen bomb heated up, the Atomic Energy Commission decided to convene a special meeting of its General Advisory Committee GAC to be held as soon as possible.

The GAC had been established by the Atomic Energy Act of with the objective of managing the postwar development of nuclear energy and technology in the United States. The Committee, which was chaired by Robert Oppenheimer, included many of the top-level physicists and technological leaders who had participated in major wartime projects. Other prominent members included James B.

Conant, Lee A. DuBridge, Enrico Fermi, I.