![]() So, York set up a Laboratory program to test a hydride. York’s opinion was that the Laboratory needed to get some nuclear tests under its belt, and if Teller advocated testing a hydride device, well that idea seemed to be as good as any other idea. The Laboratory with the Altamount Hills in the background (great place to cycle) and East Avenue in the foreground There are some other things, in physics, going on, but we’ll just settle on this one explanation until you can read a fuller explanation in my book. Perhaps, we can’t ask Edward directly anymore, he thought placing the thermonuclear fuel near nuclear fissions would cause that fuel to ignite. This would not be the classic Super design he and George Gamow proposed back in 1950 instead, Teller wanted to mix the thermonuclear fuel directly in with the nuclear fission fuel. ![]() The explanation for testing a uranium hydride device is that Teller was still totally focused on the Super. Instead, I’ll give you an abbreviated explanation and ask for your forbearance. ![]() (In this case, the hydrogen atoms in the hydrocarbon are deuterium, hydrogen-2, which are isotopes of common hydrogen, hydrogen-1.) Why, you may ask, would Teller want to do that? Well that’s another question isn’t it? I lay out a nice, in my humble opinion, explanation in my book, From Berkeley to Berlin, but I’m not going to go into details here. What, you may ask, is that? It is an atomic device that switches metallic uranium with a uranium salt, a mixture of uranium with a hydro-carbon compound. Teller’s mind was set on testing a hydride device. (Under this organization, Teller could veto any nuclear design he didn’t like, but it is a blessing of Teller’s personality that he never once exercised his authority to use his veto power.) Since Teller was a veteran atomic bomb designer from the Manhattan Project days, this seemed like a logical thing for York to do. When Herb York set up the Laboratory’s organization, he put Edward Teller in charge of nuclear weapons design and development. It was time to show the Washington bureaucracy what Lawrence’s cyclotroneers from Berkeley could do. The creation of the Laboratory had been hard-fought in Washington now it was time to deliver. Tower holding the Ruth device following the Ruth event
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