We seem to have hit the limit with tests such as Tsar Bomba, but that is only because it’s not reasonable or necessary to push it any farther. But I’m wondering what the theoretical limit is. Is there a limit for a single device in which size would make an effective reaction impossible?
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Depends what you mean by a “device”.
The sun has been undergoing continual nuclear burning that makes the Tsar Bomba look like a pea shooter, for 4.5 billion years. And our sun is not terribly big – there are *natural* explosions (supernovae) that release more energy than an entire galaxy’s output, for a brief period, and would wipe out all life on any planet within a few dozen light-years or more.
There’s no *theoretical* reason why we couldn’t make a device that would push enough Hydrogen and Helium together to create a supernova anywhere we wanted one, but obviously that’s an engineering problem that’s way *way* beyond what we can currently do.
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