Chapter 36 Helium 3 Nuclear Bomb
Li Wu took a long breath and calmed down. The excitement and tension in his mind began to disappear little by little, replaced by a calmness. At this moment, girlfriends, soldiers, professors, nuclear bombs and the like all disappeared from his mind. He only had work in his eyes.
This is just a slightly complicated job. Just do it as usual and complete it.
The helium-3 bomb is more complicated than the ordinary hydrogen bomb. It adopts a three-layer ring structure. The innermost layer is the atomic bomb, which is the one transported by the two soldiers; the middle is deuterium and tritium, which are the main materials of the hydrogen bomb; the outermost layer is helium-3.
In Professor Ding Yidong's design, the innermost atomic bomb is detonated first, generating a temperature of more than 50 million degrees, igniting the outer layer of hydrogen bombs. Then, the billion-degree high temperature generated by the detonation of the hydrogen bomb ignites the outermost helium-3 layer.
Compared with the hydrogen bomb, the helium-3 nuclear bomb actually has only the outermost helium-3 layer, but don't underestimate this extra layer, its technical difficulty has increased several times.
Why? First, helium-3 is usually in gaseous state. Although it can be compressed into liquid state under high pressure, it still needs to be equipped with a large refrigeration device to be preserved for a long time. This is too troublesome. A small nuclear bomb certainly cannot be equipped with such a thing.
Moreover, helium is an inert gas and basically does not react chemically with any object. How can it be converted into a solid state?
Professor Ding Yidong spent ten years studying and finally solved this problem, that is, physical adsorption. He invented an active nanocarbon, which can adsorb a large amount of helium-3 gas at low temperature. When it returns to normal temperature, the adsorbed gas will not be released.
Okay, this problem is solved. Although it can be explained in one sentence, it took people ten years of hard work.
The second point is that there is also an engineering difficulty, because the explosive power of the atomic bomb is too strong, it can destroy the entire device in an instant, which requires that the time for the hydrogen bomb to ignite helium-3 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 it is extremely difficult to implement. Often, before the hydrogen bomb ignites the helium-3, the entire helium-3 layer is blown away by the atomic bomb.
Of course, it is also possible that only part of the helium-3 is ignited, but such a result is still a failure for everyone.
In order to solve this problem, Professor Ding Yidong made a detailed calculation. The inside of the nuclear bomb is simply a three-ring structure, which is actually very complicated. The purpose is to allow the helium-3 layer to be ignited as quickly as possible. In addition, the thickness of the deuterium-tritium layer must be controlled within an appropriate range so that the deuterium-tritium layer and the helium-3 layer must be in contact within the first time of the explosion.
They designed a 20-nanometer-thick iron sheet to isolate the deuterium-tritium layer from the helium-3 layer. As long as the atomic bomb explodes, this layer of iron sheet is pierced by force, and the helium-3 can quickly enter the deuterium-tritium layer and be ignited. Of course, there must be an anti-vibration design here, and the iron sheet will not break due to ordinary vibrations.
But in this case, the engineering difficulty is very great. First, the quality of the deuterium-tritium layer must be strictly controlled, preferably to the microgram level. Second, during the production process, the pressure of the helium-3 layer must be slightly greater than that of the deuterium-tritium layer, but not too great, otherwise once the iron sheet paper is broken, everything will be mixed together, resulting in the failure of the experiment.
Therefore, Professor Ding Yidong was very nervous. There was only one chance, and if it failed, there would be no more. He wanted to go up to help, but he also knew that if he went up, he would definitely be a hindrance, so he could only wait helplessly behind.
The same was true for the other people. They did a lot of work, but in the last step, they could only watch. The same machine, when made by different people, will definitely have different final results, just like the same factory, the products made by workers in different shifts have different yields, and there must be good and bad ones.
There is a sequence in learning, and there is specialization in skills. They can only believe in Li Wu unconditionally.
Li Wu did not have so many thoughts. He now entered a state of no joy or worry, just focusing on what was in front of him. His hands began to operate, and each piece of work was done smoothly, just like a computer program, without any mistakes.
Most of the molds have been produced in the factory, and the last thing he has to do is to assemble these things.
He manipulated the electronic arm to take out the atomic bomb from the black box first, and carefully placed it in a fixed position. Of course, the shell of this atomic bomb had been peeled off long ago, leaving only a layer of lead shell. The half-life of enriched uranium is very long, and the radiation hazard is not very large. A layer of lead shell can basically block it, so everyone did not shy away from anything.
One of the two soldiers was Zhao Yao from the special forces. This black fat man was not able to attend the party, but was dispatched to perform this mission. He must be a little unhappy. But now, he dared not make a sound, and he was very nervous. There were really bullets in his gun. If these scientists did something wrong, he would definitely shoot them.
What he advocated in the army was strength and passion, and he liked the latest weapons and equipment very much. Every time he had to be the first to test it, he could recite the parameters of any guns and shells one by one. However, he still felt a strange sense of tension when he saw nuclear weapons, the most ferocious killing weapon in human history.
"I finally saw the atomic bomb, and I will also see the hydrogen bomb and the more powerful helium-3 nuclear weapon." Zhao Yao suddenly felt that this trip was worth it.
As the procedures proceeded, the robotic arm manipulated again and took out some solid compounds with blue light. These were lithium deuteride and lithium tritide, the main materials of hydrogen bombs. The hydrogen bombs of current technology all use solid compounds, and no longer use liquid hydrogen.
In history, in 1952, the Americans successfully tested the first hydrogen bomb, using liquid deuterium and tritium as thermonuclear materials, which made the hydrogen bomb carry a heavy burden. Because in order to keep deuterium and tritium in liquid form, a complex refrigeration system must be brought, so that the first hydrogen bomb reached 65 tons and could only be loaded in a train car.
This lost its practical significance, and people called this hydrogen bomb with liquid deuterium and tritium as thermonuclear fuel a wet hydrogen bomb.
Later, scientists discovered that lithium-6, an isotope of lithium, is an excellent thermonuclear material. If lithium deuteride-6 and lithium tritide-6 are used as hydrogen bomb materials, not only can thermonuclear reactions be achieved, but also the heavy refrigeration system can be thrown away, greatly reducing the size of the hydrogen bomb and achieving miniaturization.
People call hydrogen bombs filled with lithium deuteride and lithium tritide mixtures dry hydrogen bombs.
Now, Li Wu is going to make a dry hydrogen bomb. The steps here are very critical. According to the design requirements, the materials are quantitative, and the higher the accuracy, the better. It is best to be accurate to 0.1 micrograms, which is one ten-millionth of a gram.
The best electronic scales now can barely reach this level. It is too difficult to achieve this accuracy. No matter how hard ordinary people try, they can only achieve milligrams (1 gram = 1000 milligrams = 1000000 micrograms). No matter how much their hands shake, they fluctuate around tens of milligrams, but Li Wu is different.
His hands are too stable, and it is possible to be accurate to micrograms. It is just a matter of time and patience. The robotic arm kept moving, using an extremely fine needle to extract the last few micrograms, but at this time, it was not as flexible as human hands. Li Wu immediately took the field and began to extract manually.
He was constantly trying to enter a mysterious state, which often appeared in the past. It was the peak of experience and luck. Sometimes when the state was up, it could be completed in a flash.
This may be a kind of practice makes perfect, or it may be a personal talent. In short, it is difficult to explain clearly. Sometimes when I go to the vegetable market to buy vegetables, the old man selling pork can accurately cut the weight of a piece of meat without relying on an electronic scale, with an accuracy of grams. Li Wu thought that he might also have this talent, but it was obviously countless times stronger than the old man selling meat. He could be accurate to micrograms.