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If you want to harness fusion power for a Mars base, this is the only way we know how to do it. Drill a shaft deep into the martian regolith place a thermonuclear bomb at the bottom, bury it, and then detonate it, just like an underground nuclear test on Earth. This will melt alot of permafrost, heat alot of rock, and water pumped down into the hot rock layers will flash steam, and the expanding steam can power a turbine generator as it escapes from the hot rock layers. Some of this steam can also be recondensed to supply fresh water for the crew. When the rock cools, another hydrogen bomb can be exploded underground to reheat the rocks and drive steam turbines some more.
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Ummm later on for terraforming maybe, but nukes don't make a very controlled energy source.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
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On Earth simply drilling deep enough reaches an almost inexhaustible supply of geothermal energy. Mars will be similar, but the drill will have to go deeper. If this is done under a layer of water ice, the water can be used to transport the heat to the surface. Of course this will be ridiculously expensive, but it ought to work. Far better and cheaper to use controllable fission energy until fusion is ready.
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Energy from an explosion will shatter surrounding rock, leave a hole then collapse the roof, leaving lots of loose rubble. Radioactivity will make the area inaccessible for many years afterward. Any water run through that shattered rock will come back contaminated with radioactive waste. It would probably leach radioactive contaminated water into the surrounding area for quite a distance. Big mess, but the heat will not last very long. Sorry, but very bad idea.
One terraforming technique proposed was to nuke the surface of Mars. That would heat the planet quickly, but radioactive fall-out would take so long to decay that by the time it would be safe to walk on the surface the planet would have frozen again. Again, bad idea.
If you want to use fusion power, try to design a reactor that uses inertial confinement. We have seen with magnetic confinement that the more power you generate in the reactor, the more power you need to confine it. The best you can achieve is break-even, so abandon magnetic confinement, look to inertial confinement.
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Energy from an explosion will shatter surrounding rock, leave a hole then collapse the roof, leaving lots of loose rubble. Radioactivity will make the area inaccessible for many years afterward. Any water run through that shattered rock will come back contaminated with radioactive waste. It would probably leach radioactive contaminated water into the surrounding area for quite a distance. Big mess, but the heat will not last very long. Sorry, but very bad idea.
One terraforming technique proposed was to nuke the surface of Mars. That would heat the planet quickly, but radioactive fall-out would take so long to decay that by the time it would be safe to walk on the surface the planet would have frozen again. Again, bad idea.
If you want to use fusion power, try to design a reactor that uses inertial confinement. We have seen with magnetic confinement that the more power you generate in the reactor, the more power you need to confine it. The best you can achieve is break-even, so abandon magnetic confinement, look to inertial confinement.
Yeah, people high on the science org chart ought to spend more money on inertial confinement research.
However, energy from fusion is still a looong way off.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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This 'Devil's Pot' idea has been discussed before.
You would be better off exploding the nukes within an evacuated, lithium/U-238 lined steel vessel, inside a powerful magnetic field. The fission fragments and ionised material could then be directed onto a graphite element at each end of the vessel, which would contain cooling tubes. The graphite would also act as a heat store, allowing the pulsed nature of the reactor to be smoothed, giving a continuous steam supply.
I'm not so sure about the economics of using mini H-bombs in this way though. If the things could be mass-produced cheaply enough, I suppose it could work.
It should be reasonably achievable to construct a containment vessel capable of containing kiloton level blasts in a virtual vacuum. Whether it would work politically is another matter.
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Energy from an explosion will shatter surrounding rock, leave a hole then collapse the roof, leaving lots of loose rubble. Radioactivity will make the area inaccessible for many years afterward. Any water run through that shattered rock will come back contaminated with radioactive waste. It would probably leach radioactive contaminated water into the surrounding area for quite a distance. Big mess, but the heat will not last very long. Sorry, but very bad idea.
One terraforming technique proposed was to nuke the surface of Mars. That would heat the planet quickly, but radioactive fall-out would take so long to decay that by the time it would be safe to walk on the surface the planet would have frozen again. Again, bad idea.
If you want to use fusion power, try to design a reactor that uses inertial confinement. We have seen with magnetic confinement that the more power you generate in the reactor, the more power you need to confine it. The best you can achieve is break-even, so abandon magnetic confinement, look to inertial confinement.
Multiple stage thermonuclear warheads are actually cleaner per energy unit released than a single stage thermonuke or a fission bomb. All bombs use the same amount of plutonium.
A fission bomb implodes a shell of plutonium so that it rapidly reaches critical mass creating a nuclear explosion.
This nuclear explosion generates an expanding wavefront of x-rays which out-races the blast front since x-rays travel at the speed of light and the blast shockwave does not. In a hydrogen bomb, some of these x-rays are redirected to heat the fusion fuel, which is deuterium-trintium in a compount with lithium, to millions of degrees which creates conditions that meet the Lawson criterion and the hydrogen nuclei fuse and release even more x-rays in a wave front that out races the blastwave of the thermonuclear explosion.
In a two-stage thermonuclear device some of the x-rays from the thermonuclear explosion get redirected to heat some more deuterium-trintium compond that the initial blast waves of the fission explosion and fusion explosion have not yet reach, this second mixture also undergoes a thermonuclear explosion.
Following this logic, one can also make a three-stage thermonuclear bomb and a four-stage thermonuclear bomb starting with the same amount of plutonium with which the initial fission device required. This means that the larger the thermonuclear explosion the less radioactive material release per unit energy release in the explosion. A very large thermonuclear explosion underground will heat alot of rock into magma, thus creating a magma resevoir which can be exploited by a geothermal power plant. These magma resevoirs undoubtably occur naturally on Mars in some locations, but with thermonuclear devices you can create your own and exploit them in locations of your own choosing. Liquifying Martian rock also has the added benefit of releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as a byproduct. If your primary purpose is to generate power for a base, this greenhouse gas release is a side benefit at no added cost.
The amount of time the magma takes to cool is a function of the volume of rock heated to magma divided by the surface area of its interface with the surrounding cooler rock. This means the more rock that is melted, the longer it will stay hot and can be heated for power generation purposes. The main drawback of nuclear bombs is that they release all their energy at once. If we can get surrounding rock layers to absorb some of the energy of the initial explosion, the slowly cooling rock can be used as a power source. For how long depends on the size and the amount of energy released in the initial explosion. Underground nuclear explosions were conducted by the US government for decades, so in this case the only difference is that the underground explosion occurs on Mars and the colonists try to exploit it as a power source, which was not done during the original government tests.
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This 'Devil's Pot' idea has been discussed before.
You would be better off exploding the nukes within an evacuated, lithium/U-238 lined steel vessel, inside a powerful magnetic field. The fission fragments and ionised material could then be directed onto a graphite element at each end of the vessel, which would contain cooling tubes. The graphite would also act as a heat store, allowing the pulsed nature of the reactor to be smoothed, giving a continuous steam supply.
I'm not so sure about the economics of using mini H-bombs in this way though. If the things could be mass-produced cheaply enough, I suppose it could work.
It should be reasonably achievable to construct a containment vessel capable of containing kiloton level blasts in a virtual vacuum. Whether it would work politically is another matter.
Nuclear devices are relatively small and compact compared to the amount of energy they release. No doubt a one or a two-stage nuclear device can be delivered to the surface of Mars if a crew module and an Earth-return vehicle can also be sent there. When considering the economics of the whole enterprise, one muct consider that the initial manned Mars explorations will not be economical and won't pay for themselves. Exploding nukes underground wastes alot of energy, but also consider that this energy is cheaply generated. The amount of cost per joule is less that the previous joule generated. That alot of these energy will be leaked into the surrounding rock layers and not exploited by the colonists will not be a serious consideration by the colonists as the nuclear explosion comes cheap.
As an analogy, consider the economics of ICBMs and what they would be if used to deliver conventional chemical high explosives to distant cities, it would make more sense to deliver conventional high explosives by high altitude long range bombers than by ICBM, due the the weight of the high explosives used compared to the amount of energy released. Thermonuclear warheads make the economics of ICBMs work, as they deliver the same amount of energy as millions of tons of conventional high explosives, in the form of a small light-weight warhead.
By contrast the type of compact fission reactor talked about for the initial Mars exploration, would not make much sense if used to power one's home here on Earth.
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They are quite efficient as far as joules per kilogram, but that does you not one bit of good if you can't capture the energy generated. A small nuclear reactor would weigh less than a few decent yield bombs and the geothermal plant needed to capture the energy.
Besides, destroying the subsurface where life might be hiding, and that your power plant is sitting on top of? Not so good.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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There is very little reason to do anything like this. Most of the energy released from the explosion wouldn't be possible to capture and use. It would require digging deep with expensive drills. People will be pissed at transporting Nuclears Weapons across space etc etc
There are much more practical means of obtaining energy on the Martian surface. Its not as if
By the time settleing Mars becomes possible, Fusion Power will have been cracked. Maybe ITER will do it or NIF or the even Dr Bussard's Polywell Fusor. Somebody will achieve it. Besides that in the future, Solar Cells will be way way more energy efficient. Some of them can reach 40% efficiency. With Quantum Dot and Nano Tech even higher efficiencies can be achieved.
It will be much easier to drag those across space and unfold them on the surface.
Thermonuclear Weapons might have an interesting use for quickly removing/deforming terrain but thats just my personal speculation
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A sufficiantly large N-Stage Thermo-nuclear device could melt the ice caps on Mars, thereby releasing a substantial quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere triggering a greenhouse effect. The explosives would have to be distributed across the ice-caps, and perhaps the x-rays could be transferred from stage to stage via x-ray lasers, if done right, you could perhaps use the same amount of plutonium as was used in the Hiroshima bomb to trigger the whole chain reaction leaving very little nuclear fallout behind.
Terraforming the planet probably also means messing around with the subsurface permafrost in a big way also. One can do it with mirrors and gradual warming the way Zubrin suggested, or perhaps use an n-stage, chain-theromonuclear bomb. The stages would have to be mass produced, but if arrayed precisely you could perhaps get away with only one fission trigger to set the whole thing off. There us after all no upper limit on the potential yeild of fusion bombs, the only limiting factors is the availability of a fission trigger and the amount of fusion fuel.
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Clever, but I don't think you could channel enough intensity of X-rays far enough to initiate a second detonation at any useful distance.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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If you want to terraform, use deuterium/helium-3 ignited by a chemical explosive. Don't use plutonium or any fissionable material at all. It's hard to ignite a fusion explosion with chemical implosion alone, but theoretically posible. Using D/3He is even harder, the ignition temperature is 10 times as hot, but there are a couple advantages. The source materials are not radioactive, so they're safe to handle. Yup, a thermonuclear bomb that has no radioactive material what so ever. Second, the radiation would be proton, not neutron. Proton radiation isn't nearly as "infectious". That means the burst of radiation would be just as danagerous, but it wouldn't leave radioactive fall-out. A clean nuke.
The other thing for terraforming is to deliberately design the warhead to "fizzle". A relatively soft, slow reaction will not generate nearly as great a shock-wave. Bomb designers want a sharp explosion for maximum damage, they try to avoid a fizzle. But if you want to melt the polar ice pack, then you want something more like thermite than TNT.
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Its not just hard to ignite fusion of any isotope with chemical explosives - its impossible. They just can't produce the necessary pressures/temperatures high or long enough before the device is destroyed. Nowhere close to high enough for what you want.
With a "fizzle" "dud" nuke you have a similar problem, except igniting fission instead of fusion; the bomb blows up before much fission takes place, so no/little energy is released. This is what happens when nukes don't work/aren't built properly.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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It's not as hard as you think. They used to use a radioactive isotope in a little device that had the trick of releasing neutron radiation when it was crushed. The problem was a half life that required replacing the radioactive isotope after several months, less than a year. The upgraded design uses deuterium/tritium gas at its core, the chemical implosive causes a little fusion which provides the burst of neutron radiation. That neutron radiation ensures the crushed plutonium segments fission sharply, in a controlled explosion. Then the hollow shell of exploding plutonium acts as an implosive to crush the deuterium/tritium. That causes the remaining gas to fusion. So the gas that is fuel for the thermonuclear explosion is also the trigger for the fission explosion. Ironic, eh?
The trick for a purely chemical explosive trigger is to raise the amount of fusion that occurs to the point it releases enough energy and enough radiation to trigger the remaining gas to fuse in a rapidly cascading reaction. You also have to focus the chemical reaction to produce an extremely intense pressure and temperature in a tiny spot at the focus of the implosion, right in the centre. Sonoluminescence causes fusion in deuterated acetone, so that demonstrates the effect of a good focus. You can also make the chemical explosive lens out of pure octanitrocubane instead of polymer bonded HMX. Shaping the lens is the trick.
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What you are describing is a fusion-boosted bomb, which I believe you have the order wrong: the Plutonium fission actually starts first, which generates the necessary conditions to initiate fusion of the D/T gas inside, and not the chemical explosive. If this were not the case, the fusion reaction would not be fast enough to generate the neutron pulse which goes on to boost the fission reaction prior to explosive disassembly. Remember, particle and radiation speeds are much higher than blast wave speeds.
he trick for a purely chemical explosive trigger is to raise the amount of fusion that occurs to the point it releases enough energy and enough radiation to trigger the remaining gas to fuse in a rapidly cascading reaction. You also have to focus the chemical reaction to produce an extremely intense pressure and temperature in a tiny spot at the focus of the implosion, right in the centre.
Impossible. Chemical explosives simply don't have the energy density to do this. You can't make the lens powerful enough regardless what kind of chemical explosive you use, you are piddling around with tens of percent from HMX to ONC and the like, when what you need is an order of magnitude. If this were practical, the military would have done it long ago as the ultimate weapon, a pure fusion bomb.
Sono-fusion is a largely useless curiosity which has fooled you into baseless optimism about the possibility of chemical explosive induced fusion igntion.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Actually, the military did use the system I talk about. The fission initiator is the second generation, they now use a third generation called a pulse neutron tube. The reason the fusion initiator (2nd generation) works is that very little fusion is required, only 10^-24 the rate that a fusion explosion requires. The second reason is a highly focussed chemical implosive achieves very high temperatures at the centre. Thirdly the gas is a statistical Maxwellian distribution, a very small proportion of atoms exceed the average energy. It is enough to initiate fission.
The trick is then to increase the temperature to cause a cascade escalation of fusion, and do it quick enough to that the explosive compressed gas doesn't dissipate. Rumours are the military has been working on this for a few years. I suspect they're trying it with D/T rather than D/3He, but they are working on it now. Then again, if there are rumours in the public, does that mean they're finished and have it sitting on a shelf?
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Clever, but I don't think you could channel enough intensity of X-rays far enough to initiate a second detonation at any useful distance.
An alternative is to build two huge Thermo nuclear bombs in polar orbit around Mars, and set them off when they are over the North and South Poles respectively. A big enough explosion will vaporize them completely due to the radiation, X-rays, and Gamma rays, the ice will stop these rays and sublime explosively adding much CO2 to the atmosphere and perhaps some oxygen as well, since these hard rays might photo-disassociate the carbon dioxide molecules. Whether it does this or not hardly matters as the resulting atmosphere will still be too thin to breathe, though perhaps liquid water could then exist on the surface at a greater range of temperatures than it does now.
For some applications, it does not matter if all the radiation from the nuclear reaction gets released at once, for others it does. Such a huge fusion bomb would probably be quite substantial in size, though the initial fission trigger need not be any bigger than that for the Hiroshima bomb.
Large space nukes such as this have other applications as well, such as destroying asteroids on a collision course with Earth. The nukes we have now are not sufficient to destroy something like a 5 mile-wide asteroid, but a large enough space nuke could do the trick. Most of the nukes we now have are designed to be carried by conventional ICBMs to destroy enemy cities and targets, but if we build the bomb in space, we need not limit ourselves to the mass that a conventional ICBM can carry. The fission trigger would probably by produced on Earth, and the fusion stages as well, each stage can be delivered to orbit in a seperate launch vehicle if need be and the complete bomb can be assembled in orbit. An Ion engine or a plasma rocket can deliver the bomb efficiently through interplanetary space to where its needed.
There is also the possibility that such a device might be used as a military weapon, but its hard to envision the capability to destroy an asteroid or to terraform a planet that does not harness forces which could also be used as a weapon. An international project with detonation codes might be required to avoid the possibility of a hostile power exploding this bomb over Earth.
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I think I still prefer teh combination of greenhouse gasses with orbital mirrors. Chris McKay noticed we know how to cause global warming, so let's deliberaly cause global warming on Mars. Instead of prohibiting CFCs, deliberately release CFCs. But the problem with CFC is that it releases chlorine when it decomposes, which in turn destroys ozone. UV interacts with O2 to create ozone, as well as destroying ozone. Ozone will be created by UV from the sun as soon as we build an oxygen atmosphere, then reach equilibrium at some point. Since UV is required to make ozone, I suspect the equilibrium will cause surface UV-B to be about the same as Earth, and actually UV-A will be lower. We just have to ensure we don't do something stupid to destroy ozone, like releasing CFC. Instead use other greenhouse gasses: PFC, HFC, and SF6.
According to the text book by Martyn J. Fogg, neither greenhouse gasses nor orbital mirrors alone will be enough to do the job. However, greenhouse gasses will trap additional sunlight from orbital mirrors, making them more effective. So both together will.
Pumping out fluorocarbons in that quantity will require multiple chemical factories, each as large as a full-scale chemical factory on Earth. Each of those factories will need full-scale mines to harvest fluorine minerals, and for SF6 you also need sulphur. You'll need a major power source to run all that equipment, probably a nuclear reactor for each chemical factory. Mars Odyssey already found thorium on Mars, and thorium reactors have already been built on Earth. We're talking major industry to build all this, but look at the industry of any city in any industrialized country. We know how to build all that.
The first mass produced automobile was built in 1908. The first long distance freeway in the United States was the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened on October 1, 1940. That's pretty quick. Although cars existed before 1908, they were hand-made and extremely expensive, available only to the very rich. That's 38 years from horse drawn wagons and carriages to the first turnpike. Can we terraform Mars that quickly? Physics does set some limits, building an oxygen atmosphere will take longer, but sublimating dry ice for pressure to walk outside without a spacesuit and melting water ice so rivers flow and rain falls is only a matter of heat. Then peat bogs can start to grow, converting loose regolith into organic soil and releasing oxygen. Lichens will grow on rocks. Once we have pressure and water, life will start to take hold. In this early stage of terraforming settlers will require an oxygen mask, but that's a lot safer and more convenient than a spacesuit. We can build that world within a single lifetime. It's only a matter of determination.
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There is very little reason to do anything like this. Most of the energy released from the explosion wouldn't be possible to capture and use. It would require digging deep with expensive drills. People will be pissed at transporting Nuclears Weapons across space etc etc
There are much more practical means of obtaining energy on the Martian surface. Its not as if
By the time settleing Mars becomes possible, Fusion Power will have been cracked. Maybe ITER will do it or NIF or the even Dr Bussard's Polywell Fusor. Somebody will achieve it. Besides that in the future, Solar Cells will be way way more energy efficient. Some of them can reach 40% efficiency. With Quantum Dot and Nano Tech even higher efficiencies can be achieved.
It will be much easier to drag those across space and unfold them on the surface.Thermonuclear Weapons might have an interesting use for quickly removing/deforming terrain but thats just my personal speculation
False. The only energy that could not be captured as heat or focused plasma would be the part that emerges as neutrinos. There is no reason why a pulse unit fission/fusion reactor could not be made to work.
I agree that the Polywell would be a much easier way of harnessing fusion, if it can be made to work.
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I think I still prefer teh combination of greenhouse gasses with orbital mirrors. Chris McKay noticed we know how to cause global warming, so let's deliberaly cause global warming on Mars. Instead of prohibiting CFCs, deliberately release CFCs. But the problem with CFC is that it releases chlorine when it decomposes, which in turn destroys ozone. UV interacts with O2 to create ozone, as well as destroying ozone. Ozone will be created by UV from the sun as soon as we build an oxygen atmosphere, then reach equilibrium at some point. Since UV is required to make ozone, I suspect the equilibrium will cause surface UV-B to be about the same as Earth, and actually UV-A will be lower. We just have to ensure we don't do something stupid to destroy ozone, like releasing CFC. Instead use other greenhouse gasses: PFC, HFC, and SF6.
Simply adding an Earthlike Atmosphere to Mars would have way more greenhouse effect than that same atmosphere does to Earth simply due to the sheer mass required under one third gravity to obtain a 1 bar air pressure on the surface. Since air weighs only one third as much on Mars as it does on Earth, you need three times as much of it per unit area on Mars as you do on Earth. More air will hold more heat, even if that air is simply nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor in the same percentages as on Earth. If Mars had that atmosphere and was 1 AU away from the Sun it would be blisteringly hot. Clorine is a great concern and may interfere later on with making the planet completely habitable. I suspect that an Earthlike atmosphere would have three times the thickness of ozone layer as well, it may be hard to get a suntan on a fully terraformed Mars.
According to the text book by Martyn J. Fogg, neither greenhouse gasses nor orbital mirrors alone will be enough to do the job. However, greenhouse gasses will trap additional sunlight from orbital mirrors, making them more effective. So both together will.
Pumping out fluorocarbons in that quantity will require multiple chemical factories, each as large as a full-scale chemical factory on Earth. Each of those factories will need full-scale mines to harvest fluorine minerals, and for SF6 you also need sulphur. You'll need a major power source to run all that equipment, probably a nuclear reactor for each chemical factory. Mars Odyssey already found thorium on Mars, and thorium reactors have already been built on Earth. We're talking major industry to build all this, but look at the industry of any city in any industrialized country. We know how to build all that.
It might be well to have factories that produce something other than just pollution or greenhouse gases. One Earth, the greenhouse gasses we emit are a side-effect to our production of something else. One reason I mentioned underground nuclear explosions is that they do release gases that could enhance the greenhouse effect. A nuclear reactor might be more efficient in producing energy or at least wasting less of it, but nuclear reactors don't produce greenhouse gases, they produce solid nuclear waste instead. A typical nuclear warhead also produces nuclear waste, but it generates alot more energy for the amount of solid nuclear waste that it produces, whether we can recover enough of it to make it economic is another question. In underground nuclear explosions, if done properly, most of the solid nuclear waste stays underground and will not bother the astronauts. The Nuclear explosion will cause an earthquake and heat the surrounding rocks and melt permafrost, this is waste heat that is doing it, some of the energy can be recovered to run the base, while the heat that is wasted will do other things that benefit the long term terraforming of the planet. There is plenty of radioactivity underground anyway, even without the nuclear explosions.
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There is also the possibility of using pure fusion bombs without the fission triggers. A fusion bomb is a form of enertial-confinement fusion. Typically a fission bomb is used to heat the fusion fuel so that fusion occurs, resulting in a much bigger explosion, but there is nothing that says the intial conditions under which fusion occurs has to come about from splitting Uranium or Plutonium atoms. Another way to get fusion under way is with laser implosion. A tiny little pellet of lithium-deuteride is targeted by a bank of lasers from all direction, heating and imploding the pellet to meet the Lawson criterion, the resulting explosion can be used to heat a second fusion stage to meet the Lawson criterion resulting in a bigger explosion, and that in turn can heat the third stage of the fusion bomb, the fusion reactor gets destroyed in the process, so you would want such reactors to be cheap and disposable, but the result is a thermonuclear explosion without the release of heavy radioactive wastes. In the long term we may want to use that as a source of energy and also to heat the subsurface to release gases into the atmosphere while we do so.
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Fusion is an x-ray source, and one can do fusion without fission, the National Ignition Facility is scheduled to go online in 2009, that is a fusion reactor that uses a huge bank of lasers aimed at imploding Lithium-Deuteride pellets, this creates mini nuclear explosions within the chamber, presumably such tiny explosions might be harnessed to meet the Lawson criterion to set off subsequent fusion reactions in much the same way that a fission trigger sets off a fusion bomb. So lets say we have a tiny pellet of lithium-deuteride surrounded by a greater mass of lithium deuteride in an outer shell. The shell has a bunch of holes in it to admit the passage of the lasers to implode the tiny pellet, the pellet explodes with a tiny nuclear explosion, the x-rays from that nuclear explosion meet the Lawson criterion heating up the surrounding Lithium-Deuteride so that it undergoes nuclear fusion, and then a much larger explosion ensues destroying the reactor chamber and setting off a mushroom cloud without the usual fission by products in its fallout.
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