Chapter 36: The Helium-3 Nuclear Bomb

Quentin took a long breath and slowed down his mind, the excitement and nervousness in his head started to disappear a little bit, and was replaced by a calmness, in this moment, his girlfriend, soldiers, professors, nuclear bombs and so on all disappeared from his mind, his eyes only saw the job.

It was just a slightly more complicated job, just do what you normally do, finish it, and you're done.

The helium-3 bomb was more complex than the ordinary hydrogen bomb, it used a three-layer ring structure, the innermost layer was the atomic bomb, the one the two soldiers had transported over; in the middle was deuterium and tritium, the main materials for the hydrogen bomb; and the outermost layer, helium-3.

In Professor Ding Yidong's design, the innermost atomic bomb detonates first, generating a high temperature of over 50 million degrees, igniting the outer layer of hydrogen bombs. Immediately afterwards, the hydrogen bomb detonates at a temperature of a billion degrees and then ignites the outermost layer of helium-3.

Compared to hydrogen bombs, helium-3 bombs are actually just the outermost layer of helium-3, but don't underestimate the technical difficulty of this extra layer.

Why? First, helium-3 is normally gaseous, and although it can be compressed into a liquid state under high pressure, it has to be equipped with a large freezing device to preserve it for a long time, which is too much trouble for a small nuclear bomb.

Moreover, helium is an inert gas and basically does not react chemically with any object, so how can it be converted into a solid state?

After ten years of research, Professor Ding Yidong finally solved this problem: the physical adsorption method. He invented a kind of activated nano-carbon, which can adsorb a large amount of helium-3 gas at low temperature. When it returns to room temperature, the adsorbed gas will not be released.

Well, this problem is solved. Although it is understood in one sentence, but it took people ten years of work.

Second, there is another engineering difficulty, because the explosive force of the atomic bomb is so strong that it can destroy the whole device instantly, which requires that the time to ignite the helium-3 of the hydrogen bomb must be very, very short.

To put it simply, the atomic bomb ignites the hydrogen bomb, and the hydrogen bomb ignites the helium-3. The design is very good, but the practice is extremely difficult, and often the entire helium-3 layer is blown away by the atomic bomb before the hydrogen bomb ignites the helium-3.

Of course, it was possible that only part of the helium-3 was ignited, but such a result was still a failure for the crowd.

To solve this, Professor Ding Yidong made fine calculations. The inside of the bomb was simply described as a three-ring structure, which was in fact very complex, in order to allow the helium-3 layer to be ignited most quickly. Moreover, the thickness of the deuterium-tritium layer had to be controlled within a suitable range so that the deuterium-tritium layer and the helium-3 layer had to be in contact within the first moment of the explosion.

They designed a 20 Nano thick sheet of iron to isolate the deuterium-tritium layer from the helium-3 layer, and as soon as the bomb exploded and the sheet of iron was pierced by the force, the helium-3 could quickly enter the deuterium-tritium layer and be ignited. Of course, there must be an anti-vibration design, and the iron sheet will not be broken by ordinary vibration.

First, the quality of the deuterium-tritium layer had to be strictly controlled, preferably to the micrograms level, and second, the pressure of the helium-3 layer had to be slightly higher than that of the deuterium-tritium layer during the production process, but not too high, otherwise once the iron sheet paper broke, everything would be mixed together and the experiment would fail.

Therefore, Professor Ding Yidong's heart was very nervous, there was only one chance, and if it failed, it would never happen again. He wanted to go up to help, but he also knew that he went up to help for sure, can only wait in the back of the eyes dry.

Several other people also, they have done a lot of work, but the last step, but can only watch. The same machine, different people to do, the final result is certainly different, just like the same factory, different shifts of workers to make the product, the yield varies, there must be good and bad.

They had to trust Quentin unconditionally.

Quentin, on the other hand, did not have so many thoughts. He now entered a joyless and worry-free situation, just focusing on what was in front of him. His hands began to operate, and one by one the work was done as if it were a computer program, without the slightest error, in a flowing manner.

Most of the molds had already been produced in the factory, and the last thing he had to do was to put them together.

He manipulated the electronic arm and first took out the atomic bomb from the black box and carefully placed it in a fixed position. Of course, the shell of this atomic bomb and such had been stripped away long ago, leaving only a lead casing wrapped around it. The half-life of enriched uranium is very long, and the radiation hazard is not very great, so a layer of lead casing can basically block it, so the crowd did not avoid anything.

One of the two soldiers is none other than James in the special forces, the fat black man was not able to attend the party, but was transferred to carry out this mission, the heart must be a little upset. But now, he did not dare to give a breath, nervous, his robbery is really a bullet, in case these scientists do something ghostly, it is certainly a gun greeting past.

He is in the military is to advocate the power and blood, for the latest weapons and equipment is like a great deal, each time to grab the first test, what firearms shell parameters can be memorized one by one. However, he saw to nuclear weapons, this kind of human history's most ferocious killers, but still have a wonderful sense of tension.

"The atomic bomb, finally seen, the hydrogen bomb, and the more powerful helium-3 nuclear weapons, also to see." James suddenly felt that the trip was still relatively worthwhile.

As a procedure was carried out, the mechanical arm was once again manipulated to take out some solid compounds with a blue glow, which were lithium deuterated and lithium deuterated, the main materials for the hydrogen bomb. The current technology of the hydrogen bomb, are using solid compounds, no longer use liquid hydrogen.

Historically, the Americans successfully tested the first hydrogen bomb in 1952, using liquid deuterium and tritium as thermonuclear materials, which made the hydrogen bomb a big burden to carry. Because to keep the deuterium and tritium in liquid state, a complex refrigeration system had to be brought along, making the first hydrogen bomb 65 tons, which took a train car to load.

This lost its practical significance, and people called this hydrogen bomb, which used liquid deuterium and tritium as thermonuclear fuel, a wet hydrogen bomb.

Later, scientists discovered that lithium-6, an isotope of lithium, was an excellent thermonuclear material. If lithium-6 deuteride and lithium-6 tritium are used as hydrogen bomb materials, not only can the same thermonuclear reaction be realized, but also the heavy refrigeration system can be got rid of and the size of the hydrogen bomb can be greatly reduced and miniaturized.

The hydrogen bomb containing a mixture of lithium deuteride and lithium deuteride is called a dry hydrogen bomb.

Now, Quentin is going to make a dry hydrogen bomb. This is a very critical step. According to the design requirements, the material is quantitative, and the higher the accuracy, the better.

Now the best electronic scales, but also barely to this extent. Want to reach this precision, it is too difficult too difficult, the average person how hard, can only do milligram level {1 gram = 1000 mg = 1,000,000 micrograms, how the hand shakes, but also in the tens of milligrams up and down, but Quentin is not the same.

His hand is too stable, accurate to micrograms is doable, it is only a matter of time as well as patience. The mechanical arm kept moving, using a very thin syringe to extract the last few micrograms, but at this point, it was not as flexible as the human hand.

He was constantly trying to get into a mysterious state that had often occurred before, a peak expression of experience as well as luck, and sometimes the state came up and was done at once.

This may be a kind of practice makes perfect, or it may be a personal talent, in any case, it is difficult to explain clearly. Sometimes when you go to the market to buy food, the pork seller can cut out the mass of a piece of meat accurately, without relying on electronic scales, with an accuracy down to the gram. quentin thinks that he may also be this talent, but obviously countless times more powerful than the meat seller, and he can be accurate down to the microgram.