What element is used in the h-bomb?

Answer 1

The pit ("core") in the primary of a two-stage thermonuclear weapon (or by itself in a single stage weapon) is a sphere or ovoid (hollow in modern weapons) made of a fissile material such as plutonium (usually) or uranium (less frequently). They are usually alloyed and plated with some other metal (with plutonium, the plutonium is usually alloyed with gallium and plated with nickel or gold)to stabilise them. They are frequently hollow but there is a pit tube to inject tritium or tritium / deuterium gas mixture into the core to boost the primary and adjust the yield of the weapon.

Some weapons contain a layer of a neutron reflecting material such as beryllium surrounding the pit or bonded to it. The pit may also be bare in certain compact linear implosion weapons.

Very old-style nuclear weapons had a pusher just outside the reflector made of aluminum or depleted uranium.

The secondaries of two-stage weapons (thermonuclear) also contain Lithium-6 deuteride as the source of deuterium and tritium for the fusion fuel during the ablative implosion of the secondary. There is a plutonium "spark plug" (it's a long hollow cylinder of plutonium, or a sphere in more modern compact weapons like the W87 or W88) inside and an outside layer made of lead or depleted uranium to compress the fusion fuel and the spark plug.

Answer 2

uranium, an element that only previously found major use as a pottery glaze and component in some steel alloys.

it was either used directly, after expensive enrichment in its rare 235 isotope.

or after transmutation in a nuclear reactor into a new element, plutonium.

Answer 3

1. fissile isotopes: Uranium-235, Plutonium-239, Uranium-233
2. fusible isotopes: Deuterium, Tritium, Lithium-6, Lithium-7

Answer 4

there are many, a few are: uranium, plutonium, lithium, deuterium, tritium, copper, aluminum, carbon, iron, silicon, oxygen, lead, etc.

Answer 5

Uranium-235