Nuclear security

Watch Out: How North Korea Could Secretly Make Nuclear Weapons

North Korea’s recent (disputed) claim of a successful hydrogen bomb test has observers wondering where the North Koreans are getting their hydrogen from. The hydrogen that powers thermonuclear weapons is not ordinary hydrogen gas, but its isotopes or variants deuterium and tritium.

H-bombs use a small atomic bomb to transform dry fuel such as lithium deuteride into deuterium and tritium, then squeeze them together until they fuse, forming a split-second small star. But adding just a few grams of deuterium and tritium to the core of an atomic bomb dramatically boosts its power. One need not set off a small star to ride the hydrogen boom.

This deuterium-tritium “boosting” dramatically increases the yield of fission weapons, and permits smaller weapons and better economy of fissile material. Conceived by Theodore Taylor, one of America’s most gifted weaponeers, the very existence of boosted fission technology remained classified until the early 1970s.