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The B46 nuclear bomb was an American high-yield thermonuclear bomb which was designed and tested in the late 1950s. It was never deployed. Though originally intended to be a production design, the B46 ended up being only an intermediate prototype of the B-53 and was test fired several times. These prototypes were known as TX-46 units (Test/Experimental).
According to researcher Chuck Hansen, the W34 Python was a gas-boosted fission primary used in several designs of American thermonuclear weapons.
The W58 was an American thermonuclear warhead used on the Polaris A-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Three W58 warheads were fitted as multiple warheads on each Polaris A-3 missile.
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The uranium hydride bomb was a variant design of the atomic bomb first suggested by Robert Oppenheimer in 1939 and advocated and tested by Edward Teller. It used deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, as a neutron moderator in a uranium-deuterium ceramic compact. Unlike all other fission-based weapon types, the concept relies on a chain reaction of slow nuclear fission. Bomb efficiency was adversely affected by the cooling of neutrons since the latter delays the reaction, as delineated by Rob Serber in his 1992 extension of the original Los Alamos Primer.
The Robin was the common design nuclear fission bomb core for several Cold War designs for American nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, according to researcher Chuck Hansen.
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References
Notes
- ↑ AWPC 1959.
- ↑ Moore 2010, p. 126.
- ↑ Moore 2010, p. 201.
- ↑ Hansen 1995b, p. 461.
- ↑ Miller, Brown & Alonso 1987.
- 1 2 Hansen 1995a, p. 389.
Bibliography
- AWPC (1959). AWPAC/8/5 (Report).
- Hansen, Chuck (1995a). The Swords of Armageddon. Vol. VI. Chukelea Publications.
- Hansen, Chuck (1995b). The Swords of Armageddon. Vol. VII. Chukelea Publications.
- Hansen, Chuck (2001). "Beware the old story". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 57 (2): 52–55. doi:10.2968/057002015.
- Miller, G.H.; Brown, P.S.; Alonso, C.T. (1987). Report to Congress on stockpile reliability, weapon remanufacture, and the role of nuclear testing (Report). OSTI 6032983.
- Moore, R. (2010). Nuclear Illusion, Nuclear Reality: Britain, the United States and Nuclear Weapons, 1958-64. Springer. ISBN 9780230251403.
