Hydrogen Dinosaur?

A real expert gave his opinion last week about the hydrogen bomb. In the current Scientific American, Dr. Robert F. Bacher, professor of physics at CalTech, a former (1946-49) AECommissioner (and therefore an inside authority), speaks up frankly. His opinion of the hydrogen bomb: it is not practical as a military weapon. Carefully omitting secret details. Dr. Bacher points out that hydrogen fusion is not really a new primary source of atomic energy. It is only a new way of using the energy in old, familiar uranium.

One of the hydrogen bomb's necessary ingredients (a principal one, Dr. Bacher implies) is tritium, the heavy form of hydrogen with one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus. Tritium must be made in a chain-reacting pile by a reaction that costs one free neutron for every atom of tritium produced. There are plenty of free neutrons in a pile, but they originate in fissioning atoms of uranium-235 and are normally used to form plutonium (for atom bombs) out of nonfissionable U-238. Each neutron that is used to form an atom of tritium means less plutonium in the AEC's stockpile. "The diversion of neutrons from the manufacture of plutonium to make tritium," says Dr. Bacher, "would mean a real sacrifice of potential atomic bombs in order to obtain the ingredients for hydrogen bombs."

Would the sacrifice be worthwhile? Dr. Bacher thinks not. Even old-style atomic bombs, he points out, are too big to use economically on many military targets. Finding worthy targets for hydrogen bombs, 1,000 times more powerful, would be harder still.

"Most large metropolitan areas," says Dr. Bacher, "include many sections that are covered by water or otherwise unsettled. Thus a hydrogen bomb would blast many, square miles whose destruction would contribute in no way to the effectiveness of the bomb. Atomic bombs, on the other hand, could presumably be dropped so as to avoid overbombing uninhabited areas. Furthermore, it was found in the last war that a saturation raid which greatly hampered fire-fighting forces caused damage far beyond the areas of immediate blast effects. Considering all these factors, it seems likely that there is no metropolitan area which could not be thoroughly destroyed with 25 atomic bombs at most, and perhaps as few as ten. It also appears that two atomic bombs would completely paralyze a city, even a large one . . .

"Just what additional military use is a hydrogen bomb? It looks very much as if everyone is simply fascinated by the idea of 'the bigger the better.' There are some examples in the history of the world that should lead us to question this view. We should not forget the dinosaur . . . Indeed, we should not forget the battleship, now almost extinct."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.