The Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Explosive Devices

Subtitle: 'The physics of the H-bomb is also the key to the unlimited energy of fusion' From the Foreword It has been an unavoidable fact of life since the Manhattan Project that fusion science has been closely associated with research on thermonuclear weapons. The H-bomb first brought the process of fusion to public attention, two decades before the scientific advances that have brought fusion energy to the threshold of energy breakeven. The solution to the originally formidable problems of substantial energy release from weapons systems has been an integral part of the achievement of controlled fusion, particularly in inertialconfinement fusion. Some form of inertial-confinement fusion will ultimately produce the most efficient and useful output of fusion energy, in all likelihood. Inertial fusion therefore defines one of the most important frontiers of civilian and military science about which citizens must be adequately informed. This is not possible at present, however, because many of the basic ideas and results in inertial fusion are still classified. For many years we of the Fusion Energy Foundation have fought to change this situation. About the Author: Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg, a pioneer in inertial-confinement fusion, is considered the father of impact fusion for his early work on thermonuclear ignition by hypervelocity impact. Now a research professor at the Desert Research Institute of the University of Nevada System, he has long been at the forefront of research on the implementation of nuclear energy for spaceflight. His concept of a rocket engine propelled by a sequence of thermonuclear microexplosions, in fact, was the inspiration for the Project Daedalus starship study of the British Interplanetary Society. He received the 1979 Hermann Oberth gold medal of the Hermann Oberth-Wernher von Braun International Space Flight Foundation for his work on thermonuclear propulsion. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1929, Dr. Winterberg became fascinated with spaceflight as a youth, by reading the writings of spaceflight pioneer Hermann Oberth. He taught himself calculus at the age of 14 in order to understand Oberth’s mathematical theories. After receiving his doctorate in physics under Werner Heisenberg in 1955, he helped design the research reactor of the Society to Advance Nuclear Energy for Naval Propulsion in Hamburg, West Germany. Dr. Winterberg’s published work includes more than 130 scientific papers and articles in many books. In 1963 he published the first proposal for the ignition of a thermonuclear microexplosion by a beam of microparticles accelerated in conventional particle accelerators. And in 1967 he began a series of papers on the use of intense electron and ion beams for fissionless thermonuclear ignition, culminating in a 1969 paper describing the magnetically insulated diode as a means of producing ultraintense ion beams.