thermonuclear
of, relating to, or involving a thermonuclear reaction: thermonuclear power.
Origin of thermonuclear
1pronunciation note For thermonuclear
Words Nearby thermonuclear
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use thermonuclear in a sentence
On January 27, 1996, France conducted Xouthos, its 210th and final live nuclear test, detonating a thermonuclear warhead beneath the Fangataufa lagoon in the southern Pacific Ocean.
Inside France’s super-cooled, laser-powered nuclear test lab | Kelsey D. Atherton | August 1, 2022 | Popular-ScienceThe sun roils with heat as thermonuclear reactions in its center produce high amounts of energy.
How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather? | Eva Botkin-Kowacki | July 31, 2022 | Popular-ScienceClimate change threatens human lives and livelihoods at a scale perhaps unmatched by any other issue short of global thermonuclear war, and governments haven’t come anywhere close to adequately addressing it despite decades of efforts.
The United States has allocated over $400 million for research in controlled thermonuclear reactors to date and the USSR more than twice that amount.
From the archives: How we covered fusion power | The Editors | February 23, 2022 | MIT Technology ReviewA fusion reactor, or a fusion power plant or thermonuclear reactor, is a device that scientists can use to create electrical power from the energy released in a nuclear fusion reaction.
Energy from nuclear fusion just got a little bit more feasible | Angely Mercado | January 11, 2022 | Popular-Science
If that strikes us as tiresome and tedious, we might as well just hang it up and trigger some global thermonuclear war.
In Defense of the Selfie, Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year | James Poulos | November 20, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTThere need to be perfect conditions for the thermonuclear reaction to take place.
Any deal is good in that it averts thermonuclear economic collapse.
The daily brief said nothing about widespread plutonium dispersal or about the lost thermonuclear bomb.
A second group worked to locate the lost thermonuclear bomb, called a “broken arrow” in Defense Department terms.
Larch put off another entertainment of small stuff, with a fifty megaton thermonuclear, viewscreen-piloted, among them.
Space Viking | Henry Beam PiperIn that year, too, tests were made at Eniwetok preliminary to the detonation of the first thermonuclear device.
Atoms, Nature, and Man | Neal O. HinesProject Sedan, an underground thermonuclear detonation in 1962, established conditions for one such study.
Atoms, Nature, and Man | Neal O. Hinesthermonuclear weapons, complemented over time by strong conventional forces, threatened societal damage to Russia.
Shock and Awe | Harlan K. UllmanIt also included immersion in technology and systems from thermonuclear weapons to advanced weapons software.
Shock and Awe | Harlan K. Ullman
British Dictionary definitions for thermonuclear
/ (ˌθɜːməʊˈnjuːklɪə) /
involving nuclear fusion: a thermonuclear reaction; thermonuclear energy
involving thermonuclear weapons: a thermonuclear war
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for thermonuclear
[ thûr′mō-nōō′klē-ər ]
Relating to the fusion of atomic nuclei at high temperatures or to the energy produced in this way.
Relating to weapons based on nuclear fusion, especially as distinguished from those based on nuclear fission.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Cultural definitions for thermonuclear
A term referring to devices that use nuclear fusion, the fusion of atomic nuclei, to produce energy at very high temperatures. (See hydrogen bomb.)
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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