Editing Inertial confinement fusion (section)

===Thermonuclear devices===
{{see also|Teller-Ulam design}}

The first ICF devices were the [[hydrogen bomb]]s invented in the early 1950s. A hydrogen bomb consists of two bombs in a single case. The first, the ''primary stage'', is a fission-powered device normally using [[plutonium]]. When it explodes it gives off a burst of thermal X-rays that fill the interior of the bomb casing. These X-rays are absorbed by a special material (like [[Fogbank]]) surrounding the ''secondary stage'', which consists of fusion fuel, sandwiched between a fission fuel [[Sparkplug (nuclear weapons)|sparkplug]] and [[Tamper (nuclear weapon)|tamper]]. The X-rays heat this secondary and initiate further fission. Due to [[Newton's third law]], this causes the fuel inside to be driven inward, compressing and heating it. This causes the fusion fuel to reach the temperature and density where fusion reactions begin.<ref name=sub>{{cite web | url = http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4.html | title = Section 4.0 Engineering and Design of Nuclear Weapons | last = Sublette | first = Carey | date = 2019-03-19 | website = Nuclear Weapon Archive | language = en | access-date=2021-02-09 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210206233652/http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4.html | archive-date = 2021-02-06 | df = dmy-all }}</ref>{{sfn|Nuckolls|1998|p=1}}

In the case of D-T fuel, most of the energy is released in the form of [[alpha particle]]s and neutrons. Under normal conditions, an alpha can travel about 10&nbsp;mm through the fuel, but in the ultra-dense conditions in the compressed fuel, they can travel about 0.01&nbsp;mm before their electrical charge, interacting with the surrounding plasma, causes them to lose their speed.{{sfn|Keefe|1982|p=10}} This means the majority of the energy released by the alphas is redeposited in the fuel. This transfer of kinetic energy heats the surrounding particles to the energies they need to undergo fusion. This process causes the fusion fuel to burn outward from the center. The electrically neutral neutrons travel longer distances in the fuel mass and do not contribute to this self-heating process. In a bomb, they are instead used to either breed tritium through reactions in a lithium-deuteride fuel, or are used to split additional fissionable fuel surrounding the secondary stage, often part of the bomb casing.<ref name=sub/>

The requirement that the reaction has to be sparked by a fission bomb makes this method impractical for power generation. Not only would the fission triggers be expensive to produce, but the minimum size of such a bomb is large, defined roughly by the [[critical mass (nuclear)|critical mass]] of the [[plutonium]] fuel used. Generally, it seems difficult to build efficient nuclear fusion devices much smaller than about 1 kiloton in yield, and the fusion secondary would add to this yield. This makes it a difficult engineering problem to extract power from the resulting explosions. [[Project PACER]] studied solutions to the engineering issues,{{sfn|Nuckolls|1998|p=1}} but also demonstrated that it was not economically feasible. The cost of the bombs was far greater than the value of the resulting electricity.<ref>{{cite journal |first=F. |last=Long |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4QsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA18 |title=Peaceful Nuclear Explosions |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |volume=32 |issue=8 |date=October 1976 |page=18 |doi=10.1080/00963402.1976.11455642 |bibcode=1976BuAtS..32h..18L }}</ref>