1. Teller's triumph?
2. Gone fission
3. Credit - or blame?
The Mark 17 was the first H-bomb that could be dropped
from a plane. Its 25-foot steel casing was about 3.5 inches thick
and weighed almost 21 tons. A Teller invention allowed miniature
H-bombs. Photo: National
Although few modern inventions are the product
of a single mind, scientists have long debated who should get credit
for the central element of the thermonuclear bomb, the Teller-Ulam
design. As many experts note, Teller frequently downplayed Ulam's
part. "Teller for the last few decades of his life held a position
that was not supported by the evidence provided by others, and even
the evidence provided by himself, that he created the Teller-Ulam
design," says Carey Sublette.
"Although he had argued for years that [radiation]
compression would not help a hydrogen bomb, he said he independently
... came up with whole idea by himself, but kept it confidential,"
Sublette adds. "That is an extremely un-Teller-like behavior. ...He
was always very aggressive about promoting his ideas."
Instead, Sublette thinks that Ulam, who had
immersed himself in "the most detailed calculations anyone had done
on thermonuclear combustion, knew more about the subject than anybody
in the world at that point. Thus... he realized that extreme compression
was the solution."
Although other informed opinions differ, Teller
usually gets considerable credit:
York, a Los Alamos physicist, observed that while Ulam had proposed
an idea, Teller deserved "51 percent of the credit" because he
had "sketched out a super bomb."
Norris Bradbury, who later directed Los Alamos,
said, "Don't ask me who's the father of the H-bomb, because nobody
is..." (see Dark Sun, p. 468-9). In Bradbury's view, the bomb
was a group effort.
Stephen Schwartz, editor of the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, told The Why Files, " It would be a mistake
to give Teller sole credit for coming up with the idea or refining
it. As with many things scientific, it was very much a group effort"
(see How Ulam... in the bibliography).
The long debate over credit for Teller-Ulam
obscures Teller's prior contribution to nuclear weapons, says Sublette,
author of a book tentatively titled "A Handbook of Nuclear Weapons."
In 1945, Teller suggested placing a few grams of fusion fuel in
an atomic bomb, where it would fuse and unleash neutrons. "In many
ways, it was his most important contribution, but it doesn't get
a lot of publicity," says Sublette. "It's very fundamental; every
U.S. nuclear weapon is fusion boosted. Only 1 percent of the energy
comes from fusion, but it produces a storm of high-energy neutrons,
which instantly fissions a large proportion of the core."
Because a "boosted" bomb requires less conventional
explosive and fission fuel, it makes "a very small bomb with high
yield," Sublette says. "The miniaturized thermonuclear weapons we
have today, on cruise missiles, stacked 10-high on the MX, 14-high
on the Trident 2 missile, require very small atomic bombs, and that
requires fusion boosting. We could not have produced the huge arsenal
of 10,000-plus strategic nuclear weapons that we had around 1990
without this breakthrough."
Teller's influence was as much political
as scientific. Teller confers with President Lyndon Johnson in the late
1960's. Photo: Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
How to assess the impact of Teller's long, active
life? While it's easy to portray him as Dr. Strangelove, he was
a brilliant, energetic man who had witnessed the dark side of humanity.
After World War I, his homeland, Hungary, was briefly ruled by communists.
As a young physicist, he watched Germany elect Adolph Hitler and
begin persecuting Jews and others. These motivations, historian
Robert Norris says, left him with "deep feelings about communism
and totalitarianism... so his sensitivity toward our adversaries
over the decades were always finely tuned, and it fit in with the
physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Los Alamos laboratory,
later lost his security clearance when Teller and others suggested
he might be a Soviet spy. Many scientists never forgave Teller for
undermining Oppenheimer, who brilliantly led the atomic-bomb project.
Alamos National Laboratory
To admirers, that was exactly what United
States needed during the Cold War. Michael Anastasio, director of
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said, "The loss of
Dr. Edward Teller is a great loss for this Laboratory and for the
nation. He was a passionate advocate for science and the development
of Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He put his heart and soul into
this Laboratory and into ensuring the security of this nation, and
his dedication never foundered."
After the war, atomic scientists who were
awed by their own creation formed the Council for a Livable World, the Federation of American Scientists, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to address issues of war,
peace and technology.
Teller was the most outspoken of the atomic
scientists who took an opposite tack. Instead of controlling nuclear
weapons, they wanted to give the United States an unassailable arsenal.
But now, when the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea are causing
terrific headaches, did all of that ingenuity backfire?
Perhaps, says Bulletin editor Schwartz. Teller,
he says, "helped make the world safe, or unsafe, for nuclear warfare.
...In a sense, he helped create the balance of power, helped make
the world an exceedingly dangerous place in the name of trying to
make it safer."
On May 25, 1953, a giant artillery fired a
nuclear warhead with the power of 15,000 ton of TNT at the Nevada
Test Site. With another Teller brainstorm, fusion boosting, the
Bomb could now fit a (huge) cannon. Photo: Department
And while Teller played a key role in the
Teller-Ulam invention, he may actually have delayed development
of the bomb that won World War II, Schwartz adds. "During the Manhattan
Project, Oppenheimer and others thought his interest in thermonuclear
bombs was hindering the development of the atom bomb." Although
Teller probably realized that a thermonuclear bomb required an atomic-bomb
trigger, "it didn't matter to him, he wanted to focus on his particular
Indeed. York, who worked in the atomic trenches
with Teller for many years, says, "You can't understand Teller without
using the word 'messiah.' He was absolutely certain he was right
about everything, and was absolutely determined to get his way.
He was obsessed, was always obsessed. You combine those two characteristics,
and he had a lot of influence."
I'll huff and I'll puff... In 1953, the government
tested nuclear weapons on typical American homes and furnishings.
This house fried in a bath of radiation, and then blew it away.
No word on the Barcalounger.... Click
here to see 416K movie.
That influence was evident in Teller's vehement
resistance to a nuclear-test ban. York, who also became an important
government advisor, notes that even President Dwight Eisenhower questioned
Teller's impact. In Ike's farewell
speech, he famously cautioned against the influence of the military-industrial
complex. Less famously, he also cautioned about the influence of
what he termed the "scientific-technological elite."
York says he later asked the former president
who he was referring to, "and without any hesitation, without thinking,
he responded 'Teller and [Werner] von Braun'" (the German rocket
scientist who helped found the U.S. space program).
Eisenhower, York says, "regarded Teller as
a bad influence."
Can we influence you to check out
our H-bomb bibliography?