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Can such pure-fusion (neutron) bombs be built? As Senator Dodd remarked, scientists will not say that the job is impossible (TIME, Feb. 10). But nearly all agree that it is extremely difficult. Since N-bombs cannot have fission detonators and still act like N-bombs, some other detonator must be found that can raise the temperature of the fusion ingredients to some 1,000,000° C. so that they can start to react. So far, no chemical explosive or other nonfission detonator has remotely approached this temperature. Until something comes near this goal, there is little point in demanding explosive N-bomb tests. The best N-bomb that could be built today would no more explode than if it were made of putty.
Devastating Effect. A few proponents of the N-bomb have hinted that the Atomic Energy Commission's scientists, under the direction of Chairman Glenn Seaborg, are not making enough effort to develop it—because they think it cannot or should not be done. Responsible officials in many branches of the Government are quick to respond with categorical denials. Admiral John T. Hayward, head of Navy research and development, says that the AEC's labs are doing all they can, and doing it well. Senators on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy agree. All authorities insist that while other novel nuclear weapons may be ripe for testing, the fabled N-bomb is not. Some think it will not be ready for nearly five years.
Whenever it is ready, the N-bomb will be a deadly weapon. It would have no ordinary fallout, but its neutrons themselves would make many things radioactive, and the intensity of this effect would depend on the local character of the soil and buildings. Attacking troops might have to wait hours or days before moving in to the enemy's undamaged fortifications.
Though classic battlefields may be few in an all-out war of the future, the N-bomb may prove to have other valuable military uses. Carried aloft by anti-missile missiles, it could do its job without spraying the ground below with radioactive fallout. But perhaps the most devastating effect of the N-bomb would be to make nuclear explosives available to all nations. Plutonium and uranium 235 for fission bombs are expensive and scarce, but fusion ingredients (lithium, deuterium, etc.) are comparatively cheap and plentiful. If they are the only major ingredients needed, the manufacture of N-bombs and big H-bombs to be triggered by them will be an easy matter, once the secret of their construction becomes common knowledge.