What's the difference between a Nuclear and Hydrogen bomb? Is there a difference?

Question

Is one more powerful?

Does anybody know the affects of these 2 types of bombs? (EX: Blast radius, affects on a city after detenation, tempurature after detenation, destructive force/power, etc.?)

Answer 1

The Answers here are mostly correct.
A Thermonuclear Hydrogen weapon is a Fusion of Hydrogen to Helium ++++ (buch of other side products)

An Atom bomb most associated with a nuclear bomb is the fission or splitting of large atoms like uranium or plutonium.

The Fusion Thermonuclear is easier to scale and doesn't release Gamma radiation... (Fusion is mostly just heat.) Thermonuclear devices have a much larger blast and energy by in large but much less radiation than a fission weapon.

All weapons identified at this time require a fission explosion in a shaped charge to create the neccesary heat and pressure for a fusion (hydrogen fusion)explosion to occur.
Technically there does not have to be a fission bomb to create the reaction. Heat and pressures neccesary have been generated in labs without this.
For example the Tokamac Fusion Reactor uses Plasm in a magnectic field with lasers generationg the heat.

Answer 2

A hydrogen bomb is a fusion device which is triggered by an atomic bomb, which is a fission device. Hydrogen bombs can theoretically be designed for any level of explosive force; the most powerful one ever detonated was a Soviet device dropped on Novaya Zemlya in the 1960s; it had a yield of more than 60 megatons.

Answer 3

A nuclear warhead creates an explosion by splitting really big atoms (uranium, plutonium) into smaller ones. A hydrogen bomb (also known as thermonuclear weapons) as the first guy said, require a nuclear warhead, not a very big one but a freaking nuke nonetheless to detonate it. The hydrogen bomb rather than splitting big atoms involves crushing very small atoms (like hydrogen) into eachother so hard that they fuse together and a whole bunch of energy is released that eats an entire city pretty much.

Answer 4

I have heard reported that the H bomb can be 500 to 1000 times more powerful than the A bomb.

Answer 5

A nuclear bomb uses nuclear fission to detonate &a hydrogen bomb uses nuclear fusion to detonate. Hence a hydrogen bomb is more powerful

Answer 6

Hi. To give you a hint, a nuclear bomb is used as the detonator for a hydrogen bomb.

Answer 7

To put it simple:
Nuclear Bomb : uses Nuclear Fission : less destructive

Hydrogen Bomb : uses Nuclear Fission to rase temeperature high enuf to cause Nuclear Fusion of H2 : highly destructive

Answer 8

Both are nuclear weapons. A hydrogen bomb is specifically a fusion bomb (combining light nuclei), while the others are fission bombs (splitting nuclei). Hydrogen bombs are typically more powerful.

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