![]() ![]() ![]() He was using the doomsday device as a reductio ad absurdum to argue for stronger conventional forces so that nations would be less likely to rely on nuclear weapons, and also to encourage the US to focus on a “counterforce” nuclear strategy. Kahn did not want such a thing to be built. Such bombs could spread so much fallout that they could kill so many by direct radiation and kill so many more by ecological degradation that humanity would likely go extinct. Thus a cobalt jacketed bomb could be made so large that it would not matter where it was detonated or how the winds blew. The UK did put a small amount of cobalt in one of their test devices to see if cobalt bombs really would be as bad as they seemed to be, and they were.Ī hypothetical set of large cobalt bombs first explored by Herman Kahn in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War. By 1960 it had become clear that hydrogen bombs could be scaled up to any size you want simply by adding more stages. So even after fifty years when there’s not much Co-60 around, crops and livestock could have problems, and there would be health effects for humans. It’s a micronutrient used as a coenzyme by all life on land. And remember, cobalt is a biologically active metal. A low altitude blast from an inefficient early 60’s bomb might render an area uninhabitable for 6-9 months by comparison. Studies of cobalt bombs showed that affected areas could be rendered uninhabitable for 50-75 years. Cobalt bombs need high concentrations of fallout. Bigger blasts suck the fallout into the stem of the mushroom cloud and spread the fallout to lower concentrations. Using cobalt the jacket would reduce the blast of the bomb because there would be no or less fission in the secondary, but you might want the blast to be less. Co-60 turns into nickel by beta decay accompanied by strong gamma ray emission. If the jacket were made out of cobalt 59, a non-radioactive isotope of cobalt, or if Co-59 were alloyed with U-238, the cobalt would absorb neutrons and become cobalt 60, one of the most deadly radioisotopes. This type of bomb construction made enough neutrons for a truly dangerous cobalt bomb to be possible. But as the jacket of a fusion secondary U-238 will be overloaded with so many neutrons that it have plenty of fission reactions and add to the explosive force of the bomb. It is not (very) radioactive, and will undergo fission only with great difficulty. ![]() This was a brilliant idea because U-238 is a waste product of a nuclear weapons infrastructure, so useless by itself that it’s sometimes called depleted uranium. Teller and Ulam came up with the idea of using uranium 238 as the outer part of the fusion chamber. The secondary needed to be made out of something very strong that absorbed neutrons. ![]() The most common H-bomb design of that era used a small fission primary to start a much more energetic reaction in the fusion secondary. The first hydrogen bombs came along in less than four years. Still, the idea of the cobalt bomb entered the public imagination even if it wasn’t really possible to make one.īut in just a few short years it would be possible to make a serious cobalt bomb. Adding a cobalt to a fission bomb of the types available in 1950 wouldn’t really add much to the effects of an airburst as the cobalt would be dispersed too thinly. Most other scientists dismissed the idea that a cobalt bomb would really be that dangerous. He didn’t really want to build such a device, he was using the cobalt bomb as an example of how runaway nuclear weapons research could lead to weapons that could end human civilization. Leo Szilard, a former Manhattan Project physicist, proposed that such a device could be created in 1950. This is the best known and most investigated form of salted bomb. But whether the story is true or not, it gave rise to the idea of a “salted bomb”, a nuclear weapon that could render an area uninhabitable for years or even decades. Many historians think that didn’t really happen, that it was a story to ease the concerns of war-weary Romans, to assure them that Carthage would never attack again. This is similar in effect to the story of the Romans pouring salt into the fields around Carthage so that the city would be difficult to rebuild. But there have been have been proposed nuclear weapons that used radiological contamination as an intentional means of killing, and that could render the areas attacked unusable for decades. Last week I wrote a bit about radiological terrorism and dismissed it as not very dangerous. Nuclear Friday: Canc… on Nuclear Friday: Poloniumīacopa on Nuclear Friday: For your Holid… Nuclear Friday: And… on Nuclear Friday: The Homeless…
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