Key to the DOE's nuclear project are the federal laboratories where nuclear weapons are designed, built, and tested. They include Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in Livermore, California.

 When a uranium-235 atom absorbs a neutron and fissions into two new atoms, it releases three new neutrons and some binding energy. Two neutrons do not continue the reaction because they are lost or absorbed by a uranium-238 atom. ... This causes a nuclear chain reaction.


The RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, also known as the "Tsar Bomba", is the biggest and most powerful thermo nuclear bomb ever detonated. It was exploded by the Soviet Union on 30 October 1961 over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Russian Arctic Sea. The hydrogen bomb was air dropped by a Tu-95 bomber.



f a nuclear weapon is exploded in a vacuum-i. e., in space-the complexion of weapon effects changes drastically: First, in the absence of an atmosphere, blast disappears completely. Second, thermal radiation, as usually defined, also disappears.