RDS-37 was a Soviet name for their first nuclear test of a "true" hydrogen bomb.
Its power was roughly equivalent to 1.6 megatons of TNT.
It was their first in the megaton range and was on November 22, 1955. It was a multi-stage thermonuclear device which utilized radiation implosion called Sakharov's "Third Idea" in the USSR (the Teller-Ulam design in the USA). It was at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan. The Joe Four device exploded in 1953 was labeled as a "hydrogen bomb" as well but was more similar to a "boosted" fission bomb than a megaton range hydrogen bomb.
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External links
References
- David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1995), ISBN 0300066643
- Alexei Kojevnikov, Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists (Imperial College Press, 2004), ISBN 1860944205
- Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1995), ISBN 068480400X