This reminds me of the AI/ML hype.
But maybe not; that's a pretty direct statement. Certainly there were ideas to blow weapons up and then recover energy from the heated walls (often some kind of high heat capacity liquid).
“The earliest references to the use of nuclear explosions for power generation date to a meeting called by Edward Teller in 1957. Among the many topics covered, the group considered power generation by exploding 1 Mt bombs in a 1,000-foot (300 m) diameter steam-filled cavity dug in granite.
[…]
A series of 50-kiloton bombs would be dropped into the cavern and exploded to heat the water and create steam. The steam would then power a secondary cooling loop for power extraction using a steam turbine. Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gnome:
“Unlike most nuclear tests, which were focused on weapon development, Shot Gnome was designed to focus on scientific experiments:
- "Study the possibility of converting the heat produced by a nuclear explosion into steam for the production of electric power."“
Hopefully that will change soon, if/when tokamaks, inertial confinement, or some similar technique are able to produce a net gain in power; yet that would require a bunch of basic science problems to be resolved in plasma physics, materials science, etc.
It's true that placing a fusion bomb in a uranium case can massively boost the yield of any single explosive, and in a full fission-fusion-fission design a good half the energy can come from fission. It's not required to work though, a transparent casing can be chosen too, that's the whole concept behind neutron bombs and "low-yield" weapons after all. I'm no expert for sure, this is just my understanding from reading some of the archives and such, so I'd be curious to read any other sources you have.
It seems to be generally accepted that 10Mt (two thirds) of the yield in Castle Bravo was indeed from fast fission of the tamper.
Thank you in advance!
On the other hand, if primarily looking to maximize yield for cost, one can use U-238 instead - the higher energy neutrons from the D-T fusion will cause fission (although not a chain reaction) in the tamper as well.
Redwing Tewa / Bassoon Prime test achieved 5Mt with this change in the same the test series and the design was refined ultimately to the B-41 gravity bomb with 25Mt yield.
We know how to make devices with primarily fusion yield, it's more that they're not as effective as weapons.
I likes SciFi and at some point I fell on some really weird anthology of Soviet stories from the 50s.
I remember one of them was about time relativity, a cosmonaut went with a rocket close to the speed of light and when he came back, on Earth have passed hundreds of years... jolly joy perfect, because in the meantime communism has become a reality. You know, the idea was socialism is temporary and only a stepping stone towards communism.
Well that's one story.. another one was about using nuclear blasts to level mountains and transform them into fertile plains for growing crops. That has stuck me as particularly idiotic: what the heck people, what sort of crops? Radioactive ones? They didn't know about radioactivity in the 50s?
ymmv ;)
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-0-387-49...