THE SOVIET H-BOMB
1957The NewsletterJ. H. Bradley Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
The Soviet test explosion reported on April 21. 1957. is the first which can be asserted beyond all possible doubt to be ‘dirty, as far as non-governmental research results go.
It may be an entircly new type of weapon. hardiy more expensive than.a ‘small atomic bomb. The report given in The Times of April 22, 1957. is so confused as to be quite misleading, and in parts smells of special pleading. Its assertion of the absence of uranium 238 in the debris is hard to accept. A good summary is given in the Manchester Guardian of April 23, 1957 (page ten).
The significant fact is the presence of much plutonium and neptunium 239 without any uranium 237. U237 first allowed a diagnosis of the fission-fusion-fission bomb. and its absence indicates that few of the neutrons present had energies above 4 million electron volts (Mev). In other words, they were not from a lithium deuteride fusion reaction.
The Guardian talks of a possible new fusion reaction. bet it is not clear that any fusion is needed. A new reaction would need much higher temperatures than the LiD system, and it ss uncertain whether that is feasible with current detonators. Mv theory is that this was probably a rather large atomic bomb surrounded with much U236 or natural uranium. kt would work like a hydrogen bomb in all points of military interest, except the price.
These questions can only be solved (other than by the Soviet Government) by a knowledge of the power of the bomb, or the amount of even heavier elements formed in it The first should be obtainable from measurements of the blast wave, and would show whether an atomic bomb COULD be the detonator on its own.
The second would reveal approximately the peak rate at which neutrons were released during the explosion. and the absence of elements beyond plutonium would confirm the loaded atomic bomb hypothesis. Their presence was fitst detected in the debris from the American test of March 19% and confirmed the Japanese evidence. This indicated a nuclear process, and exemplified the change of quantity into quality, the rate of passage of neutrons being rapid enough to make generation faster then decay.
It is clear that the Soviet Government has joined Britain and the USA in the manufacture of the most barbarous of
Tuer May LO, 1957