I’ve heard people say there is no fallout, but there typically is a fission bomb in the secondary stage. Where does its radiation go? Is it just blown away by the fusion bomb so it’s no longer as deadly? Isn’t it still there though? Is it just weaker?
In: Physics
This ELI5 is going to turn into an ELI15 but I’m gonna try my best.
H-bombs of high yield are more efficient. H-bombs use less fissile or fusable material over the total energy released, compared to smaller H-bombs and classic A-bombs. This means that less unused material and raw bomb parts are strewn about.
Also, since the bombs are bigger, that material is spread farther distances, and is more or less diluted.
However, this isn’t to say that h-bombs are the least fallout producing weapons we have, they can be quite the opposite if we do something stupid.
A greater factor in fallout generation is burst height. Proximity to the ground can create second hand fallout, i.e., everything that isn’t bomb parts and recondensed fissile materials and fission products. Think soil.
A key example would be the Castle Bravo test. We, the United States, detonated one of the most powerful bombs devised by man, on the ground in an atoll. Uncountable pounds of sand and coral reef were irradiated, vaporized, and it rained radioactive sand snow over half the Pacific for a couple days, killing a bunch of people. That was an H-bomb, it was a very efficient one as well.
Tl;Dr: nukes r bad mkay. don’t do nukes.
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