Introductory nuclear physics

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1. unsungAug 2023
   Krane's Introductory Nuclear Physics is often considered a standard text, and includes a crash course in quantum that might be enough for someone comfortable with linear PDE's. You may also like Knoll's Radiation Detection and Measurement if you are interested in electronics and apparatus.
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2. gnfargblSep 2024
   What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? Pretty much every schematic of a Teller-Ulam type weapon -- a schematic which you will find in every introductory Nuclear Physics textbook -- shows a large cylinder with a spherical fission device at the top and a cylindrical fusion device at the bottom, plus some FOGBANK-type material of unconfirmed purpose. This image looks exactly like those schematics except that someone has imagined some little channels which look like they're intended to move energy from the primary to the secondary. Without detailed simulation and testing, a prospective weapons designer has no way of knowing whether those channels are representative of a real weapon, or just a superficially plausible hallucination.

   Overall this looks like someone asked a physics undergraduate to spend an hour imagining roughly how the well-known schematic might be fitted inside a real warhead case. It probably is exactly that. I can't imagine that showing it to the North Koreans advanced their nuclear programme by any more than fifteen minutes.

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3. gnfargblSep 2024
   My question isn't answered in the article, as I repeatedly explain elsewhere in this thread.

   As you only require one reference, I will present K.S. Krane, Introductory Nuclear Physics, section 14.5 "Thermonuclear Weapons." The relevant schematic is numbered 14.19. I chose this because it's a textbook that I remember using myself; I'm not sure what is usually used these days.

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4. GwypaasApr 2022
   It has already stopped. I studied engineering physics in Sweden which during the cold war had a very extensive nuclear weapons and energy research program. [1]

   I did the required undergraduate nuclear physics course which at the time was focused on nuclear energy. At the time a very surface level course due to being reduced in size over the years in favor or atomic and quantum physics instead.

   I still have Introductory Nuclear Physics [2] sitting in my bookshelf because I never had the chance to sell it, the course was changed to be centered around particle accelerators instead.

   That program used to be the prime source of people going into nuclear energy research and development. Today you can't even take it as an master, it died out due to everyone seeing it as a dead end career wise with the advent of renewables.

   [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Sweden

   [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Nuclear-Physics-Kenneth-...

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