The Holocaust Bomb: A Question of Time.
Nuclear weapons are commonly divided into A-Bombs and H-Bombs – “atomic” and “hydrogen” bombs – but aside from that fact, most of us have very little idea about the mechanics of the bombs, and their consequences. As a kid I was fascinated with the concept and was delighted to find some descriptive diagrams in an old “Time-Life” book on “Energy”. So for years I “knew” that ‘H-Bombs’ actually used lithium deuteride as their fusion fuels – specifically deuterium, “heavy hydrogen”, with the lithium being a fission/fusion metal (Lithium-6 + a neutron becomes deuterium and tritium, which can then fusion) to make a solid hydride out of. Lithium can also fuse by itself, but in this case it doesn’t. After learning that ‘secret’ I never thought much about it.
As a teen – especially after “The Day After” – I had dreams about nuclear war. It was a fear that I lived with all through my later childhood, but not one I entertain much ever since the old “Cold War” ended in 1991. But its a possibility that we all live with as Islamic radicalism makes gains in a nuclear nation like Pakistan, or as old Soviet arsenals rot in newly Islamic breakaway states.
Could we make the world a safer place by making the nuclear “secrets” actually public knowledge, thus making the whole nuclear exercise pointless as a means of technological superiority? Howard Morland, who gave us the “H-Bomb Secret” back in 1979, thought so and still thinks so. One point from the little we know is that such bombs are not easily made. They require state-level stability that groups like the Taleban and Al-Qaida are unlikely to sustain. The real nuclear threat comes from those who presently have the damn things, not those who want them.
Finally, Friedwardt Winterberg has mentioned the deuterium bomb as an example of a doable fusion reaction of immediate usefulness to spaceflight. He’s right – it’s a good reaction in a rocket, but damned horrible in a bomb…