Information AboutJoe 4 |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT JOE 4 | |
| nuclear bombs | |
| soviet nuclear explosive tests | |
| nuclear weapons | |
| cold war | |
| 1953 in the soviet union | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Joe 4 (USSR version: RDS-4 (''Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina''; Stalin's Rocket Engine)) was an ) model in the Soviet Union. A similar design was earlier theorized, but never tested, in the USA as the "Alarm Clock". Its power was roughly equivalent to 400 Kiloton s of TNT . The Soviet physicist Yuli Khariton estimated that Joe 4's yield was 15% to 20% Fusion , the rest Fission . Being a single-stage weapon, though, it was not capable of being scaled up indefinitely like "true" hydrogen bombs (see Teller-Ulam Design for more details on the distinctions between fusion weapons). Despite its inability to be scaled into the megaton range, the detonation was used by Soviet diplomats as leverage. The Soviets claimed that they too had a hydrogen bomb, but unlike the United States' first thermonuclear weapon, theirs was deployable (i.e. could be dropped from a bomber). Despite this claim, U.S. experts disputed its standing as a "true" hydrogen bomb. The United States did not develop a deployable version of its hydrogen bomb until 1954 . The ''Sloika'' model was never widely deployed. The first Soviet test of a "true" hydrogen bomb was on November 22 , 1955 , and was dubbed RDS-37 by the Soviets. All were at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan . SEE ALSO: EXTERNAL LINKS REFERENCES
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