The Implosion Process in Nuclear Weapons
The term "radiation implosion" suggests that the secondary is crushed by radiation pressure, and calculations show that while this pressure is very large, the pressure of vaporized materials caused by it is much larger. The outer layers of the secondary become so hot that they vaporize and fly off the surface at high speeds. The recoil from this surface layer ejection produces pressures which are an order of magnitude stronger than the simple radiation pressure. The so-called radiation implosion in thermonuclear weapons is therefore thought to be a radiation-powered ablation-drive implosion.
Read more about this topic: Radiation Implosion
Famous quotes containing the words process and/or nuclear:
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)