Boosted fission weapon

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Boosted fission weapon" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A boosted fission weapon usually refers to a type of nuclear bomb that uses a small amount of fusion fuel to increase the rate, and thus yield, of a fission reaction. The fast fusion neutrons released by the fusion reactions add to the fast neutrons released due to fission, allowing for more neutron-induced fission reactions to take place. The rate of fission is thereby greatly increased such that much more of the fissile material is able to undergo fission before the core explosively disassembles. The fusion process itself adds only a small amount of energy to the process, perhaps 1%.^[1] The fuel is commonly a 50-50 deuterium-tritium gas mixture, although lithium-6-deuteride has also been tested.^{[citation needed]}

The alternative meaning is an obsolete type of single-stage nuclear bomb that uses thermonuclear fusion on a large scale to create fast neutrons that can cause fission in depleted uranium, but which is not a two-stage hydrogen bomb. This type of bomb was referred to by Edward Teller as "Alarm Clock", and by Andrei Sakharov as "Sloika" or "Layer Cake" (Teller and Sakharov developed the idea independently, as far as is known).^[2]

Nuclear weapons
Background
Nuclear explosion History Warfare Design Testing Delivery Yield Effects Workers Ethics Arsenals Target selection Arms race Blackmail Deterrence Espionage No first use Proliferation Disarmament Sharing Strategy Terrorism Umbrella Opposition Winter Pax Atomica
Nuclear-armed states
NPT recognized United States Russia United Kingdom France China Others India Israel (undeclared) Pakistan North Korea Former South Africa Belarus Kazakhstan Ukraine
v t e