The Trinity High-Explosive Implosion System: The Foundation for Precision Explosive Applications

Abstract

This article is set during the 1944 and 1945 final push to complete Project Y-the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos-and focuses primarily on overcoming the challenge of creating and demonstrating a successful convergent explosive implosion to turn a subcritical quantity of plutonium into a critical mass. The critical mass would then efficiently yield kilotons of trinitrotoluene (TNT)-equivalent energy in about a microsecond, demonstrating the implosion atomic bomb concept. This work culminated in the Trinity atomic test near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. This implosion effect demarcated the approach to explosive science and technology the Laboratory has followed ever since, including development of high-explosive synthesis and formulation, small and large test and diagnostic facilities, shock dynamics theory, high-explosive system design engineering, and three-dimensional implosion modeling and simulation using some of the fastest computers in the world. This work also ushered in a period of broader application of precision high explosives in conventional munitions, demolition, mining and oil exploration, and space travel.

Computational Design of a Simple Flyer Plate Launcher

“…Various approaches have been developed for doing this. Explosive lenses, precision machined from combinations of different kinds of explosives to yield a flat shock wave, were a common method for explosively driven shock-loading for many years [1], [2]. Variations on that theme have been developed for explosively launching projectiles.…”

Who Invented the Trinity Nuclear Test’s Christy Gadget? Patents and Evidence from the Archives

“…Oppenheimer reorganized the laboratory in August 1944 to orient the laboratory mission around the implosion device, establishing two divisions, the Weapons Physics or Gadget Division (G) and the Explosive Division (X), both intended to primarily focus on the implosion design. 1,2 As a sign of the urgency, when Arthur Compton visited the laboratory on August 1, 1944, he gave a colloquium and advised the audience that they had already used "half of the time of the estimated maximum to produce a successful gadget." 3 In September 1944, Christy proposed a new conservative design for the plutonium pit, suggesting a change from the hollow plutonium shell to a solid sphere of plutonium with a modulated neutron source.…”