H-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

All,

We seem to be fascinated by nuclear these days; hence here is another one:

Teller was already convinced that the 'super bomb' - fusion bomb - was possible in 1941. He did partake in the Manhattan Project.

What would be the consequences in the event that the Teller-Ulman solution was found earlier and a few workable H-bombs got developed in the megaton range?

1) Would those have been used on Japan
2) Would the fission bombs have been preferred instead of the higher yield?
3) If the available bomb yield was 2 Megatons (or more), how would the world have reacted to this?

Ivan
 
ASB. As ASB as nuking Berlin in 1918.
Since the H-Bomb OTL needed a lot of data from the testing done in the late 1940’s.
Even today making an H bomb without first doing at least some live testing is iffy.
How do you propose to make an H bomb without any nuclear tests and with the massive bottleneck of fissile materialnthat existed OTL?
 
ASB. As ASB as nuking Berlin in 1918.
Since the H-Bomb OTL needed a lot of data from the testing done in the late 1940’s.
Even today making an H bomb without first doing at least some live testing is iffy.
How do you propose to make an H bomb without any nuclear tests and with the massive bottleneck of fissile materialnthat existed OTL?
well.. first you build this really cool suit that allows the person wearing it to open a worm hole that navigates time. then if you take the flux capacitor and hook it into the warp drive but control it with worfs brain, while re crystallization is taking place on the dylithium crystals then you can generate a space time inversion that will send the secrets of betty crockers cook book back and this will ultimately allow us to nuke berlin in 1918BC ;)
 
H Bombs are really right out, but Boosted Fission design that was doable with some lucky breaks. OTL Teller was thinking of this technique in 1947, of having tritium gas present in the core of the bomb to increase the efficiency of the bomb by more neutrons being freed in the early milliseconds of detonation. The first test didn't occur til 1951.

So what's this mean for 1945? Fatman and Gadget have twice the yield of OTL.
 

nbcman

Donor
How would they be delivered? The first H-bomb prototype weighed 82 tons and used a fission weapon as its trigger-and the first 'practical' devices weighed 21 tons. The first 'lightweight' devices weighed about 4 tons but weren't available until the mid to late 1950s. A practical fission weapon would had to be available first to even prototype a fusion weapon which means that the fission weapon would be used first instead of waiting for a H-bomb to be available.
 
H Bombs are really right out, but Boosted Fission design that was doable with some lucky breaks. OTL Teller was thinking of this technique in 1947, of having tritium gas present in the core of the bomb to increase the efficiency of the bomb by more neutrons being freed in the early milliseconds of detonation. The first test didn't occur til 1951.

So what's this mean for 1945? Fatman and Gadget have twice the yield of OTL.
Little Boy had 64 kg HEU.
Fat Man had about 6.5 kg Pu239.
1kg fissioning HEU=18 KT
1 kg fissioning Pu239=19 KT

Little Boy was 15 KT, or about 0.91 KG fissioned
Fat Man was 21KT, or about 1.2 KG fissioned.

Tritium boosting can get about a quarter to half of fissile material to atually fission before disassembly, in fact I think 60% is the highest ever achieved. The difficulty level is not linear, even basic 1940’ tech was able to get to get rates approaching 25%..
So Tritium boosting using these presumption*.
Little Boy: 1/4 of 64 kg would be about 288 KT
Fat Man: 1/4 of 6.5 would be 31KT.
(Little Boy was horribly inefficient).

*In theory. In reality they would have likely simply made more bombs out of the same amount of material, if Tritium boosting was available. This is very likely sinxe i) Tritium boosting was in fact developed to get over the limitations of material and ii) OTL they seriously considered breaking Little Boy and using its material to make 4-5 bombs using implosion.
 
OK, I admit defeat again.

However - a concerted effort based on Teller's conviction from 1941 is still a possibility. Maybe a bit slim though.

Ok, so let us drop this one
 
*In theory. In reality they would have likely simply made more bombs out of the same amount of material, if Tritium boosting was available. This is very likely sinxe i) Tritium boosting was in fact developed to get over the limitations of material and ii) OTL they seriously considered breaking Little Boy and using its material to make 4-5 bombs using implosion.

The way I think it could have been justified was as an early safeguard on poor polonium initiators. Tritium far easier to separate, and half life of years far better than that of weeks with polonium.
 
ASB. As ASB as nuking Berlin in 1918.
Since the H-Bomb OTL needed a lot of data from the testing done in the late 1940’s.
Even today making an H bomb without first doing at least some live testing is iffy.
How do you propose to make an H bomb without any nuclear tests and with the massive bottleneck of fissile materialnthat existed OTL?
It's not really ASB, but it does require a very strong hand guiding things towards the war ending with H-bombs. Probably the easiest way is to have someone discover nuclear fission much earlier so that bomb programs start before the war and maybe arranging matters so that the Teller-Ulam design is developed then as well. If you then stretch out the war somewhat, you might just about be able to get H-bombs developed before the war's end, although they probably won't be deliverable.
 
OK, thanks, Goblin,

My idea was a focus on Teller's research and the realization of the Teller-Ulam theorem.

Teller was on to it in 1941.

My idea was to have the Manhattan project to focus on the fusion bomb - the Teller 'super'.

Admittedly, it would be a tight fit to get the 'super' ready for 1945, but could we assume it could be done?

… and then to the consequences?
 
OK, thanks, Goblin,

My idea was a focus on Teller's research and the realization of the Teller-Ulam theorem.

Teller was on to it in 1941.

My idea was to have the Manhattan project to focus on the fusion bomb - the Teller 'super'.

Admittedly, it would be a tight fit to get the 'super' ready for 1945, but could we assume it could be done?
No. You really need to have the Manhattan Project or equivalent start sooner so that there's a few years between when the first fission devices are ready and when the war actually ends (if only from difficulties in delivery--if, say, the United States had nuclear bombs in 1943 they would have had tremendous difficulty in actually bombing Japan with them), and stretch out the war somewhat to give time for development. And even then, about all you can realistically get without more significant changes like having nuclear bombs be ready or nearly ready before the war actually starts is that they have the first prototypes ready by the end of the war, not deliverable devices. As nbcman points out, it took a lot of R&D to get bombs down to reasonable sizes, and war urgency only helps so much with that. Maybe they'll be willing to do something like having a suicide ship carrying a bomb, but that seems less probable than just not deploying the bomb.

Boosted fission devices are much easier, by comparison.
 
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