Before the Hydrogen Bomb, there was the standard nuclear bomb that was dropped in Hiroshima, Japan that ended World War 2. Only four years later, President Truman announced that U.S intelligence found out about nuclear activity and research going on in Russia. The news of a nuclear threat shocked the nation and raised the question of what the U.S response should be. This caused the initiation of the Hydrogen or the
Superbomb program. To find the information on this subject, first I went to the preceding website. PBS started a series on just the nuclear programs around the world and gave information on the developing process, scientists involved, government interactions to educate it's readers. It was very helpful considering it excluded all the complicated physics equations and helped me understand how the politics of the project worked.
To explain what a nuclear bomb is, one has to go down and look into the building blocks of life called atoms. Hydrogen bomb is different than an ordinary atomic bomb because it uses fusion instead of fission to create it's deadly force. In a
fission reaction, atoms of heavier elements are split into smaller particles to release the energy. In
fusion reactions, two light atoms are fused together to form an ideal gas causing a much larger amount of energy to be released. Both of the preceding sources are from the same internet site. They explain the production of the hydrogen bomb and the reaction that takes place to initiate the explosion without making it too complicated for someone who is not a nuclear physicist. That is why I found this source very helpful in my project. In order for this fusion reaction to take place, the temperature in the chamber has to reach 50 million degrees. For that to take place, a small atomic reaction has to take place and that is where the uranium and plutonium atoms come into play. When the plutonium or uranium atoms are split, energy is released and the temperature goes up to the desired level causing the hydrogen atoms to fuse together allowing the hydrogen bomb to be detonated. To increase the power of the bomb, all one has to do is put more plutonium or uranium into the chamber along with hydrogen gas which is very easy to gather.
At the time, physicist Edward Teller and Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis Strauss were leading the argument on what should the first-response to the Russian nuclear activity be. After months of arguing over this concept in Washington, Truman and the house decided on the production of the new hydrogen bomb due to the fact that United States could not afford not having a weapon that her enemies do possess. In the coming months, the U.S would increase the amount of
plutonium production and the supplies of uranium ore. I found this PBS article helpful again because it showed me how serious the U.S was on making this new bomb before the Russians do.
This new bomb that was now being manufactured in the United States was at least a hundred times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Japan during World War 2. Scientists said that there was not really a limit to how powerful the weapon could be as far as megatons of power it releases once it goes off. Even though the U.S was making significant progress in the production of the bomb, the soviets seemed to be one step ahead of them every time. When the USSR detonated their first atomic bomb in their testing site in Kazakhstan, U.S realized that this was now a race that the U.S must win in order to protect itself. Several weeks after the soviets detonated the bomb, both U.S and British intelligence found out that Klaus Fuchs who was a highly-ranked nuclear scientist in the U.S Nuclear program was in fact, a
spy for the Soviet Union. I found out about this spy in the history channel internet site. I found it very interesting because I was amazed by how the soviets were able to sneak a mole into one of the most secret projects that the U.S was working on at the time. The result of the capturing of the spy was the increased funding into the program and have the research labs guarded at all times to keep the research top secret and well protected. President Truman was now very motivated to finish the production of this bomb and one-up the Russians.
On November 1, 1952 the U.S detonated it's first hydrogen bomb called
"mike"(video of the explosion) which unleashed a power of 10.4 Megatons on the Marshall islands in the Pacific. I found out this date while looking around in the PBS website while looking for the production procedure of the hydrogen bomb but then I found a timeline that showed all the important events that had to do with the nuclear programs around the world. I found it very helpful because it helped me place events in order in my mind. This was the first hydrogen bomb to be ever detonated. Three years later, the Soviet Union tested it's first hydrogen bomb in November 22, 1955. This proved that both nations were now in possession of the "hell bomb" and for the first time in history, the citizens of United States were in danger of a thermonuclear war. After Truman's term ended, Eisenhower became the president and he addressed clearly to the public and the leaders of other nations that they could never have a nuclear war. He said "there just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets".
In 1963, all three of worlds leading nuclear powers decided to sign a treaty to ban nuclear war between countries for the general well-being of their citizens. Nobody wanted to deal with a nuclear fallout or radiation sickness in their country. So in 1963 Moscow, Dean Rusk (USA), Andrei Gromyko (USSR) and Lord Home (UK) decided to sign the
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. I found this book in the Randolph library and it shows the picture of the three leaders signing the treaty and explains why it is a good idea to have this kind of a contract to stop the nations from launching nuclear warheads on each other. Today, Nations are not allowed legally to launch nuclear weapons at each other but the threat of a nuclear war is still out there. Over time, we have found ways to use nuclear energy for other purposes like producing electricity, heat, treating cancer among other things. Maybe one day, we will find a way to get rid of these horrible bombs and use our knowledge of nuclear power for better purposes.
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