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Nuclear Weapon

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A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter.

In 1896, Henri Becquerel was investigating phosphorescence in uranium salts when he discovered a new phenomenon which came to be called radioactivity. He,with his fellow scientists began investigating the phenomenon. In the process, they isolated the element radium, which is highly radioactive. They discovered that radioactive materials produce intense, penetrating rays of three distinct sorts, which they labeled alpha, beta, and gamma after the Greek letters. Soon they were declared to be harmful when used in large amounts. All the early researchers received various radiation burns, much like sunburn, and thought little of it. Gradually it was realized that the radiation produced by radioactive decay was ionizing radiation, and that even quantities too small to burn posed a severe long-term hazard. Many of the scientists working on radioactivity died of cancer as a result of their exposure.

When discovered on the eve of World War II, this insight led multiple countries to begin programs investigating the possibility of constructing an atomic bomb — a weapon which utilized fission reactions to generate far more energy than could be created with chemical explosives. The Manhattan Project, run by the United States with the help of the United Kingdom and Canada, developed multiple fission weapons which were used against Japan in 1945. During the project, the first fission reactors were developed as well, though they were primarily for weapons manufacture and did not generate electricity.

The first fission ("atomic") bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT and the first

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