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Attempts to use a ''Sloika'' design to achieve megaton-range results proved unfeasible in the Soviet Union as it had in the calculations done in the US, but its value as a practical weapon since it was 20 times more powerful than their first fission bomb, should not be underestimated. The Soviet physicists calculated that at best the design might yield a single megaton of energy if it was pushed to its limits. After the US tested the "Ivy Mike" device in 1952, proving that a multimegaton bomb could be created, the Soviet Union searched for an additional design and continued to work on improving the ''Sloika'' (the "First Idea"). The "Second Idea", as Sakharov referred to it in his memoirs, was a previous proposal by Ginzburg in November 1948 to use lithium deuteride in the bomb, which would, by the bombardment by neutrons, produce [[tritium]].<ref name="DH" />{{rp|pages=299,314}} In late 1953, physicist [[Viktor Davidenko]] achieved the first breakthrough, that of keeping the ''primary'' and the ''secondary'' parts of the bombs in separate pieces ("staging"). The next breakthrough was discovered and developed by Sakharov and [[Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich|Yakov Zeldovich]], that of using the [[X-ray]]s from the fission bomb to compress the ''secondary'' before fusion ("radiation implosion"), in the spring of 1954. Sakharov's "Third Idea", as the Teller–Ulam design was known in the Soviet Union, was tested in the shot "[[RDS-37]]" in November 1955 with a yield of {{convert|1.6|MtonTNT|abbr=on}}.
If the Soviet Union had been able to analyze the fallout data from either the "Ivy Mike" or "Castle Bravo" tests, they could have been able to discern that the fission ''primary'' was being kept separate from the fusion ''secondary'', a key part of the Teller–Ulam device, and perhaps that the fusion fuel had been subjected to high amounts of compression before detonation.<
<blockquote>At that time, Soviet research was not organized on a sufficiently high level, and useful results were not obtained, although radiochemical analyses of samples of fallout could have provided some useful information about the materials used to produce the explosion. The relationship between certain short-lived isotopes formed in the course of thermonuclear reactions could have made it possible to judge the degree of compression of the thermonuclear fuel, but knowing the degree of compression would not have allowed Soviet scientists to conclude exactly how the exploded device had been made, and it would not have revealed its design.<ref name="KharitonSmirnovEtAl" />{{rp|page=20}}</blockquote>
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