Talk:Non-nuclear hydrogen bomb

Credibility of Chinese claims[edit]

WRT whether this is a scam, or a misunderstanding. I don't believe anyone ever manufactured nuclear weapons that weighed only 2kg. A Uranium bomb, or Plutonium bomb needs at least 3kg of fissile material

Leo Szilard did some blue-sky thinking about a "nuclear hand grenade", a man-portable nuclear weapons. However, this blue-sky weapon would have been able to be a fission bomb, with a very low weight, because it would use very exotic fissile material, with a very short half-life, made in a linear accelerator. He named the post-uranic element, it wasn't Californium.
Uninformed people routinely confused "dirty bombs", that spread highly radioactive nuclear dust, by blowing up a conventional explosive, to actual A-bombs and H-bombs.
Chinese sources are often full of childish claims based on uninformed parochial boosterism. For instance, when the three gorges dam was being built, Chinese sources claimed the locks on the canal would be the "largest in the world". Bzzzzt. While they were longer than the locks on the St Lawrence Seaway, they were much more shallow. And, of course, dwarfed in both length and depth by the locks on the Panama Canal. Geo Swan (talk) 10:31, 26 April 2025 (EDT)

Maybe "scam" is a little harsh, but I was writing quickly. I just can't imagine how 2 kg of hydrogen could release that much energy via any sort of conventional chemical reaction. The Hindenburg carried much more hydrogen, and did not create a fireball comparable to a nuke.

The lack of technical details and lack of coverage in mainstream news sources (or Wikipedia) makes me think that this info should be treated cautiously.

That's interesting about the locks in the three gorges. I understand China is eager to build things like that for economic reasons, but I was a little sad looking at it from an environmental perspective. But I guess we're not ready to tear down the Hoover dam either. Enki (talk) 10:58, 26 April 2025 (EDT)