1.
Thermonuclear weapon
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A thermonuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon that uses the energy from a primary nuclear fission reaction to compress and ignite a secondary nuclear fusion reaction. The result is greatly increased power when compared to single-stage fission weapons. It is colloquially referred to as a bomb or an H-bomb because it employs the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen. The first full scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952, similar devices were developed by the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, China, and France. The radiation implosion mechanism is an engine that exploits the temperature difference between the secondary stages hot, surrounding radiation channel and its relatively cool interior. This temperature difference is maintained by a massive heat barrier called the pusher. If made of uranium, as is almost always the case, it can capture neutrons produced by the reaction and undergo fission itself. In many Teller–Ulam weapons, fission of the pusher dominates the explosion, detailed knowledge of fission and fusion weapons is classified to some degree in virtually every industrialized nation. Born secret is rarely invoked for cases of private speculation, in a small number of prior cases, the U. S. government has attempted to censor weapons information in the public press, with limited success. According to the New York Times, physicist Kenneth Ford defied government orders to remove classified information from his new book, Building the H Bomb, the state of public knowledge about the Teller–Ulam design has been mostly shaped from a few specific incidents outlined in a section below. At a bare minimum, this implies a primary section consists of an implosion-type fission bomb. The energy released by the primary compresses the secondary through a process called radiation implosion, at which point it is heated, surrounding the other components is a hohlraum or radiation case, a container that traps the first stage or primarys energy inside temporarily. The outside of this case, which is also normally the outside casing of the bomb, is the only direct visual evidence publicly available of any thermonuclear bomb components configuration. Numerous photographs of various thermonuclear bomb exteriors have been declassified, generally, a research program with the capacity to create a thermonuclear bomb has already mastered the ability to engineer boosted fission. The secondary is usually shown as a column of fusion fuel, around the column is first a pusher-tamper, a heavy layer of uranium-238 or lead that serves to help compress the fusion fuel. Inside this is the fuel itself, usually a form of lithium deuteride. This dry fuel, when bombarded by neutrons, produces tritium, inside the layer of fuel is the spark plug, a hollow column of fissile material that, when compressed, can itself undergo nuclear fission. The tertiary, if one is present, would be set below the secondary, separating the secondary from the primary is the interstage
2.
United States Atomic Energy Commission
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President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1,1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective from January 1,1947. This shift gave the first members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, during its initial establishment and subsequent operationalization, the AEC played a key role in the institutional development of Ecosystem ecology. Specifically, it provided financial resources, allowing for ecological research to take place. Perhaps even more importantly, it enabled ecologists with a range of groundbreaking techniques for the completion of their research. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the AEC also approved funding for numerous projects in the Arctic and near-Arctic. These projects were designed to examine the effects of energy upon the environment and were a part of the Commission’s attempt at creating peaceful applications of atomic energy. By 1974, the AECs regulatory programs had come under strong attack that Congress decided to abolish the agency. On August 4,1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, at the same time, the McMahon Act which created the AEC also gave it unprecedented powers of regulation over the entire field of nuclear science and technology. President Truman appointed David Lilienthal as the first Chairman of the AEC, Congress gave the new civilian Commission extraordinary power and considerable independence to carry out its mission. To provide the Commission exceptional freedom in hiring scientists and professionals, the National Laboratory system was established from the facilities created under the Manhattan Project. Argonne National Laboratory was one of the first laboratories authorized under this legislation as a facility dedicated to fulfilling the new Commissions mission. The Commissions first order of business was to inspect the scattered empire of plants, the AEC was furthermore in charge of developing the United States nuclear arsenal, taking over these responsibilities from the wartime Manhattan Project. It also implemented the program to develop the hydrogen bomb. It began a program of nuclear testing both in the Pacific Proving Grounds and at the continental Nevada Test Site. While it also supported much basic research, the vast majority of its budget was devoted to atomic weapons development. Within the AEC, high-level scientific and technical advice was provided by the General Advisory Committee, in its early years, the GAC provided a number of controversial decisions, notably its decision against building the hydrogen bomb in 1949. As a result, Senator Brien McMahon influenced the decision not to reappoint J. Robert Oppenheimer to the GAC in 1952 after his six-year statutory term expired. David Lilienthal, then AEC Chair, agreed with Oppenheimer and opposed a program to build the hydrogen bomb ahead of any other nation
3.
Lithium
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Lithium is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silver-white metal belonging to the metal group of chemical elements. Under standard conditions, it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element, like all alkali metals, lithium is highly reactive and flammable. For this reason, it is stored in mineral oil. When cut open, it exhibits a metallic luster, but contact with moist air corrodes the surface quickly to a silvery gray. Because of its reactivity, lithium never occurs freely in nature, and instead, appears only in compounds. Lithium occurs in a number of minerals, but due to its solubility as an ion, is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines. On a commercial scale, lithium is isolated electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride, the nucleus of the lithium atom verges on instability, since the two stable lithium isotopes found in nature have among the lowest binding energies per nucleon of all stable nuclides. Because of its relative instability, lithium is less common in the solar system than 25 of the first 32 chemical elements even though the nuclei are very light in atomic weight. For related reasons, lithium has important links to nuclear physics, the transmutation of lithium atoms to helium in 1932 was the first fully man-made nuclear reaction, and lithium-6 deuteride serves as a fusion fuel in staged thermonuclear weapons. These uses consume more than three quarters of lithium production, Lithium is found in variable amounts in foods, primary food sources are grains and vegetables, in some areas, the drinking water also provides significant amounts of the element. Human dietary lithium intakes depend on location and the type of foods consumed, traces of lithium were detected in human organs and fetal tissues already in the late 19th century, leading to early suggestions as to possible specific functions in the organism. However, it took another century until evidence for the essentiality of lithium became available, in studies conducted from the 1970s to the 1990s, rats and goats maintained on low-lithium rations were shown to exhibit higher mortalities as well as reproductive and behavioral abnormalities. Lithium appears to play an important role during the early fetal development as evidenced by the high lithium contents of the embryo during the early gestational period. The available experimental evidence now appears to be sufficient to accept lithium as essential, the lithium ion Li+ administered as any of several lithium salts has proven to be useful as a mood-stabilizing drug in the treatment of bipolar disorder in humans. Like the other metals, lithium has a single valence electron that is easily given up to form a cation. Because of this, lithium is a conductor of heat and electricity as well as a highly reactive element. Lithiums low reactivity is due to the proximity of its electron to its nucleus
4.
Deuterium
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Deuterium is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen. The nucleus of deuterium, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one neutron, whereas the far more common hydrogen isotope, Deuterium has a natural abundance in Earths oceans of about one atom in 6420 of hydrogen. Thus deuterium accounts for approximately 0. 0156% of all the naturally occurring hydrogen in the oceans, the abundance of deuterium changes slightly from one kind of natural water to another. The deuterium isotopes name is formed from the Greek deuteros meaning second, Deuterium was discovered and named in 1931 by Harold Urey. When the neutron was discovered in 1932, this made the structure of deuterium obvious. Soon after deuteriums discovery, Urey and others produced samples of water in which the deuterium content had been highly concentrated. Deuterium is destroyed in the interiors of stars faster than it is produced, other natural processes are thought to produce only an insignificant amount of deuterium. Nearly all deuterium found in nature was produced in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago and this is the ratio found in the gas giant planets, such as Jupiter. However, other bodies are found to have different ratios of deuterium to hydrogen-1. This is thought to be as a result of natural isotope separation processes that occur from solar heating of ices in comets, like the water-cycle in Earths weather, such heating processes may enrich deuterium with respect to protium. The analysis of ratios in comets found results very similar to the mean ratio in Earths oceans. This reinforces theories that much of Earths ocean water is of cometary origin, the deuterium/protium ratio of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as measured by the Rosetta space probe, is about three times that of earth water. This figure is the highest yet measured in a comet, deuterium/protium ratios thus continue to be an active topic of research in both astronomy and climatology. Deuterium is frequently represented by the chemical symbol D, since it is an isotope of hydrogen with mass number 2, it is also represented by 2H. IUPAC allows both D and 2H, although 2H is preferred, a distinct chemical symbol is used for convenience because of the isotopes common use in various scientific processes. In quantum mechanics the energy levels of electrons in atoms depend on the mass of the system of electron. For hydrogen, this amount is about 1837/1836, or 1.000545, the energies of spectroscopic lines for deuterium and light-hydrogen therefore differ by the ratios of these two numbers, which is 1.000272. The wavelengths of all deuterium spectroscopic lines are shorter than the lines of light hydrogen
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Cold War
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The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare
7.
Strategic Air Command
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At a lower echelon, headquarters divisions included Aircraft Engineering, Missile Concept, and Strategic Communications. In 1992, as part of an overall post-Cold War reorganization of the U. S. Planning to reorganize for a separate and independent postwar U. S. Air Force had begun by the fall of 1945, with the Simpson Board tasked to plan. the reorganization of the Army, SAC initially totaled 37,000 USAAF personnel. S. Air Force as an independent service, kenney, initial units reporting to the Strategic Air Command headquarters on 21 March 1946 included the Second Air Force, the IX Troop Carrier Command and the 73d Air Division. In addition to the bombing mission, SAC also devoted significant resources to aerial reconnaissance. An F-13 squadron, the F-13 later re-designated as the RB-29 Superfortress, was also established, SAC conducted routine aerial reconnaissance missions near the Soviet borders or near the 12-mile international waters limit, although some missions actually penetrated into Soviet airspace. The flight profiles of these missions—above 30,000 feet and in excess of 300 knots—made interception by Soviet air forces difficult until the Soviets 1948 introduction of the MiG-15 jet fighter. Project Nanook, the Cold War’s first Top Secret reconnaissance effort, used the first RB-29 missions for mapping and visual reconnaissance in the Arctic, later missions were Project LEOPARD along the Chukchi Peninsula, followed by Projects RICKRACK, STONEWORK, and COVERALLS. In 1946, the US possessed only nine atomic bombs and twenty-seven B-29s capable at any one time of delivering them, unfortunately, postwar budget and personnel cuts had had an insidious effect on SAC as its Deputy Commander, Major General Clements McMullen, implemented mandated force reductions. This continued to wear down SAC as a command and morale plummeted, as a result, by the end of 1947, only two of SACs eleven groups were combat ready. In terms of overall Air Force basing and infrastructure, SAC continued to acquire a share of USAF infrastructure. In 1947, before the USAF was established as an independent service, construction commenced on Limestone AAF, Maine, fort Dix AAF, New Jersey, Spokane AAF, Washington, and Wendover Field, Utah were also transferred to SAC between 30 April and 1 September 1947. Following establishment of the USAF as a service, SAC bases in the United States consisted of
8.
Nuclear weapons of the United States
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Before and during the Cold War, it conducted over a thousand nuclear tests and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems. It is estimated that, since 1945, the United States produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads, until November 1962, the vast majority of U. S. nuclear tests were aboveground. After the acceptance of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, all testing was relegated underground, under the direction of General Leslie Groves, over thirty different sites were constructed for the research, production, and testing of components related to bomb making. The Trinity test was a plutonium implosion-design weapon tested on 16 July 1945, faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese home islands and with Japan not surrendering, President Harry S. Truman ordered the atomic raids on enemy cities. Between 1945 and 1990, more than 70,000 total warheads were developed, in over 65 different varieties, between 1940 and 1996, the U. S. spent at least $8.89 trillion in present-day terms on nuclear weapons development. Over half was spent on building delivery mechanisms for the weapon, $557 billion in present-day terms was spent on nuclear waste management and environmental remediation. Richland, Washington was the first city established to support production at the nearby Hanford nuclear site. It produced plutonium for use in cold war atomic bombs, after the end of the Cold War following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U. S. Many of its nuclear facilities were shut down, and their sites became targets of extensive environmental remediation. In 1998, the country spent a total of $35.1 billion on its nuclear weapons. According to Brown, the plants at Hanford, over a period of four decades, even today, as pollution threats to health and the environment persist, the government keeps knowledge about the associated risks from the public. Statements by the U. S. government in 2004, however, according to recent reports, much of that reduction was already accomplished by January 2008. Between 16 July 1945 and 23 September 1992, the United States maintained a program of nuclear testing. The U. S. program of nuclear testing exposed a number of the population to the hazards of fallout. The passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allowed for a filing of compensation claims in relation to testing as well as those employed at nuclear weapons facilities. By June 2009 over $1.4 billion total has been given in compensation, a few notable U. S. nuclear tests include, Trinity test on 16 July 1945, was the worlds first test of a nuclear weapon. Operation Crossroads series in July 1946, was the first postwar test series, Operation Greenhouse shots of May 1951 included the first boosted fission weapon test and a scientific test that proved the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons. Ivy Mike shot of 1 November 1952, was the first full test of a Teller-Ulam design staged hydrogen bomb and it was not a deployable weapon, however—with its full cryogenic equipment it weighed some 82 tons
9.
LGM-25C Titan II
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The Titan II was an intercontinental ballistic missile and space launcher developed by the Glenn L. Martin Company from the earlier Titan I missile. Those payloads included the USAF Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, the NOAA weather satellites, the modified Titan II SLVs were launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California up until 2003. The Titan II ICBM was the successor to the Titan I, unlike the Titan I, it used hydrazine-based hypergolic propellant which was storable and reliably ignited. This reduced time to launch and permitted it to be launched from its silo, Titan II carried the largest single warhead of any American ICBM. The missile consists of a two-stage, rocket engine powered vehicle, provisions are included for in-flight separation of Stage II from Stage I, and separation of the RV from Stage II. Stage I and Stage II vehicles each contain propellant and pressurization, rocket engine, hydraulic and electrical systems, in addition, Stage II contains the flight control system and missile guidance set. The airframe is a two-stage, aerodynamically stable structure that houses, the missile guidance system enables the shutdown and staging enable relay to initiate Stage I separation. Each stage is 10 feet in diameter and has fuel and oxidizer tanks in tandem, external conduits are attached to the outside surface of the tanks to provide passage for the wire bundles and tubing. Access doors are provided on the forward, aft and between-tanks structure for inspection. A man-hole cover for tank entry is located on the dome of each tank. The Stage I airframe consists of a structure, oxidizer tank forward skirt, oxidizer tank, inter-tank structure. The interstage structure, oxidizer tank forward skirt, and inter-tank structure are all fabricated assemblies utilizing riveted skin, stringers, the oxidizer tank is a welded structure consisting of a forward dome, tank barrel, an aft dome and a feedline. The fuel tank, also a structure, consists of a forward dome, tank barrel an aft cone. The Stage II airframe consists of a section, oxidizer tank, inter-tank structure, fuel tank. The transition section, inter-tank structure and aft skirt are all fabricated assemblies utilizing riveted skin, stringers, the oxidizer tank and fuel tank are welded structures consisting of forward and aft domes. The following data is from publication T. O, 21M-LGM25C-1 The first Titan II guidance system was built by AC Spark Plug. It used an IMU made by AC Spark Plug derived from original designs from MIT Draper Labs, the missile guidance computer was the IBM ASC-15. When spares for this system became hard to obtain, it was replaced by a more modern guidance system, the USGS used a Carousel IV IMU and a Magic 352 computer
10.
B61 nuclear bomb
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The B61 nuclear bomb is one of the primary thermonuclear weapons in the U. S. Enduring Stockpile following the end of the Cold War and it is an intermediate-yield strategic and tactical nuclear weapon featuring a two-stage radiation implosion design. The B61 is a variable yield bomb designed for carriage by high-speed aircraft and it has a streamlined casing capable of withstanding supersonic flight speeds. The weapon is 11 ft 8 in long, with a diameter of about 13 inches, basic weight is about 700 pounds, although the weights of individual weapons may vary depending on version and fuze/retardation configuration. The B61, known before 1968 as the TX-61, was designed in 1963 and it was designed and built by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It began from a program for a lightweight, streamlined weapon launched in 1961, production engineering began in 1965, with full production beginning in 1968 following a series of development problems. Total production of all versions was approximately 3,155, of which approximately 1,925 remain in service as of 2002, the warhead has changed little over the years, although early versions have been upgraded to improve the safety features. As of late 2013, there were 200 B61 bombs actively in use by the United States, of these,180 were deployed with NATO allies in Europe. Nine versions of the B61 have been produced, each shares the same physics package, with different yield options. The newest variant is the B61 Mod 11, deployed in 1997, which is a ground-penetrating bunker buster. The B61 unguided bomb should not be confused with the MGM-1 Matador cruise missile, when the B61 was still classified, aircrew were not allowed to use the term B61. Instead, it was referred to as a shape, silver bullet, the B61 has been deployed by a variety of U. S. military aircraft. USAFE and all NATO dual role aircraft can carry B61s, the Lockheed S-3 Viking was also able to deploy the B61 as a nuclear depth bomb. The B61 can fit inside the F-22 Raptors weapons bays and will also be carried by the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, as of 2005, they were deployed in Europe under the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement. NATO has agreed to improve the capabilities of this force with the increased accuracy of the B61 Mod 12 upgrade. This will, for the first time, add a modest standoff capability to the B61, as of 2013, the Pentagon was asking for an $11 billion life-extension program for the B61 bomb, which would be the most ambitious and expensive nuclear warhead refurbishment in history. Congress is opposed to this effort for cost and timeline issues, sequestration budget cuts in early 2013 have delayed any start until 2020. The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee stated that extending the life of B61s and consolidating its variants may not be a cheap and low-risk method to meet military requirements. The B61 Mod 12 is to replace the previous Mod 3,4,7, refurbishing the existing variants and eliminating the guidance kit would save $2–3 billion
