What Makes a Hydrogen Bomb Different From an Atomic Bomb?
While some people might think that a hydrogen bomb is the same as an atomic bomb, experts say they are not. After North Korea reported several days ago that it had conducted a nuclear blast as it was able to successfully detonate a hydrogen bomb, some experts raised their concerns over this claim as they suspected the country of having used a "boosted" atomic bomb instead.
According to experts, nuclear weapons first set off an explosive reaction that then lops off some sort of damaging energy that is sealed inside an atomic bomb. An example of an atomic bomb is the one which the United States used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, which caused massive destruction by freeing the subatomic neutrons of the unstable uranium and plutonium atoms of the bomb.
Unlike the atomic bomb that uses fission, or the splitting of the nucleus of an atom, a hydrogen bomb uses fusion to cause a devastating blast. Experts say that this happens when hydrogen atoms are mashed together and give off neutrons, which then release destructive energy.
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Based on their detonation process, hydrogen bombs are said to be far more powerful and destructive than atomic bombs, and experts believe that what North Korea delivered a few days ago was not a hydrogen bomb as the country claimed it to be, but an atomic bomb. They said a hydrogen bomb was 1000 times stronger than the atomic bomb that annihilated the two Japanese cities in the closing days of World War II.
It has been reported that the first three nuclear tests that North Korea conducted from 2006 to 2013 were atomic bombs and not hydrogen bombs and were about as powerful as the one dropped by the U.S. in Japan during the war, which left hundreds of thousands dead. Although the hydrogen bomb is more powerful, it is also more costly.
