In boosted-fission nuclear weapons a mixture of deuterium and tritium are heated until there is thermonuclear fission to produce helium and release free neutrons . The flurry of fast neutron particles would then excite further fission reactions with uranium , creating a " boosted " nuclear bomb . In 1951 , during Operation Greenhouse , a prototype named George , successfully validated the proof of concept for such a weapon . However , the first true boosted fission nuclear device , Greenhouse Item , was successfully tested in 1952 , generating 45.5 kilotons of explosive yield , nearly double the value of an un-boosted system . The United States stopped producing tritium in nuclear reactors in 1988 , but nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s added large spikes of radioactive elements to the atmosphere , especially radiocarbon and tritium . This complicated measurements for geologists using radiometric dating of carbon . However , some oceanographers benefited from the tritium increase , utilizing the signal in the water to trace physical mixing of water masses
Greenhouse Item
Greenhouse Item
Hydrogen isotope biogeochemistry