logoalt Hacker News

rjsw • today at 2:56 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

Trinity and Fat Man were plutonium bombs, they needed to be implosion designs because it was realized that a gun wouldn't work using plutonium [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_(nuclear_bomb)

Replies

defrost • today at 3:01 AM

As I said above - and perhaps you might like to try a primary source rather than wikipedia ?

  These weapons were, however, as different as their monikers imply. Little Boy was a uranium, gun-type weapon, whereas Fat Man was a plutonium, implosion-style weapon. Two types were needed because there was only enough uranium for one gun-type weapon, and the U.S. government knew it would need to make more than one weapon.
~ Los Alamos Nuclear Lab https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/the-vault/1023-a-tal...