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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Monday, October 03, 2022

How "clean" can powerful, high-yield H-bombs be made?

I was thinking of the advantages for civilian applications of H-bombs -- space propulsion, energy production -- if they weren't dangerously radioactive. Now, I realize fusion created by inertial confinement is clean, but, it uses more energy than it creates, unfortunately. So I was thinking in terms of conventional H-bombs -- initiated by a small A-bomb -- but constructed in a way to absolutely minimize dangerous radiation or primary radioactive waste. First of all, I suppose, it would be desirable to make the A-bomb trigger or fuse as small as possible, since fission bombs must inevitably cause dangerous radiation and primary radioactive waste. Just how small can the A-bomb initiating an H-bomb explosion be, in practical terms? That said, as far as I can determine, the remaining fusible material in all conventional H-bombs still is consumed in fission reactions to a large degree -- nowhere near 100%, or even 90% of fusible material in conventional H-bombs is actually consumed in nuclear fusion. Much of it is consumed in nuclear fission. Is there any way to bring pure fusion in H-bombs up to near 100%?

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