What can cause a nuclear weapon to “fizzle”? — WEM, Palo Alto, CA
Almost the instant the nuclear fuel reaches critical mass, it begins to release heat and explode. If this fuel overheats and rips itself apart before most its nuclei have undergone fission, only a small fraction of the fuel’s nuclear energy will have been released in the explosion. There are at least two possible causes for such a “fizzle”: slow assembly of the super-critical mass needed for explosive chain reactions and poor containment of the exploding fuel. A well designed fission bomb assembles its super-critical mass astonishingly quickly and it shrouds that mass in an envelope that prevents it from exploding until most of the nuclei have had time to shatter.