this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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Sorry I meant Lithium Deuteride.
6Li2H
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
I mean if we really want to be technically accurate here, the lithium is just a moderater for the hydrogen isotopes to fuse.
But for me it gets fuzzy when looking at the reaction.
LiD is 4 protons, 8 neutrons. Add a new neutron, and bam, you have 4 protons and 9 neutrons. But that's where it gets weird to me. The lithium needs to decay or something into a tritium and dueterium which forces the tritium to fuse with the existing dueterium in the LiD molecule? Clearly the neutron has enough energy to transfer into one of the atoms to increase the chance of tunneling actually occuring.
The only real purpose of the lithium deuteride is that it's a dry, shelf-stable, room-temperature fuel. The very first hydrogen "bomb" (actually a building-sized device) used supercooled liquid hydrogen as the fusion fuel, but this was obviously not practical for a deliverable bomb.
I get that part, it's still the reaction I can't wrap my head around mainly because I don't understand how chemistry is any different than alchemy.
I know that lithium itself doesnt fuse to create He+T+D, and I know it can't undergo fission. Since lithium isn't left over, and lithium-6 and 7 are stable, does that mean the neutron with extremely high kinetic energy really knocks like two of the LiD mokecules into each other, causing dueterium -dueterium fusion resulting in He4, and the Li6 gets more neutrons that for it to be come unstable enough to decay into tritium or deuterium?
How about a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?