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Declassified record · U.S. Department of Energy

Broken Arrow - Atom, Hydrogen Bomb Processes Differ (Albuquerque Journal, March 4, 1966) (Palomares, Spain)

Dated
Mar 4, 1966
Document type
Newspaper article
Length
1 page
Open the original scanArchive record OSTI ID 1084963 · public domain

Document text

Machine-read from the scan, so expect some errors. Lines that couldn’t be read are left out.

Page 1

Some Basic Facts Well Known Atom, Hydrogen Bomb Processes Differ NEW YORK IM — While secrecy surrounds the details of design and arming and ex plosion of nuclear bombs, some basic facts about them are well There are atomic or fission, bombs, and hydrogen or nu The fission or atomic bomb is the kind that was dropped on two Japanese cities. The hydrogen or H-bomb is its bigger, far more powerful The atomic or fission bomb gets all its energy ■-+ blast, heat and radioactivity —from the breaking apart of atoms or uranium or plutonium. When billions of these atoms split into smaller fragments, some of the energy within their cores or nuclei is transformed The secret of exploding a fission bomb is to, bring subcritical pieces of plutonium or uranium together, suddenly, at high speed. This kind of “im plosion” can be achieved with ordinary explosive charges, properly- spaced within the A fission bomb — if it ex plodes — results in devastation arid release of large amounts of radioactivity. It it fails to explode, in the full sense, pieces of the radioactive ura nium or plutonium would be scattered about, but not take part in a chain reaction. Or only small amounts of them might result in a chain reaction and release of energy locked up ferent process,;; It. yields,,: far more explosive power — ener gy— by suddenly and force fully “fusing” or merging atmos of hydrogen, or certain other lightweight, atoms. When, in one reaction, the cores of hydrogen atoms are fused, they can. form helium, an atom of heavier weight or mass, with the rest of the mat ter in the fused atoms being released as energy. Keeps Sun Burning This fusion is the kind of re action that keeps the sun burn To bring it about in a bomb, tremendous heat and energy must be applied to force the reaction to “go.” Thus, the ex plosion of an atomic bomb or device is the usual trigger. The elements in the H-bomb are so arranged that the A-bomb det onator or trigger brings about Erom the published accounts of the accident in Spain, it appears that conventional or trigger for an A-bomb—deto nated in part, scattering about pieces of the plutonium or uranium forming the explosive core of an A-bomb device. Fails to Explode . accounts to this moment—the A-bomb did not explode. Thus it did not trigger off the far more powerful H-bomb in the being carried by the aircraft. But radioactive elements con-| tained in both devices appar-| ently were scattered about, andj are being collected from the! ground on which they fell. They! are dangerous or potentiallyl dangerous because, of their in-1 herent radioactivity. The scat-l tered pieces would no longerj