One of the major problems to be solved, in addition to the main problem of designing the assembly, arises from the fact that the deuterium and the tritium booster will have to be in liquid form. Liquid hydrogen boils (that is, reverts to gas) at a temperature of 423 degrees below zero Fahrenheit under a pressure of one atmosphere (fifteen pounds per square inch). To liquefy it, it is necessary to cool it in liquid air (at 313.96 below zero F.) while keeping it at the same time under a pressure of 180 atmospheres. To transport it, it must be placed in a vacuum vessel surrounded by an outer vessel of liquid air. This would point to the need of giant refrigeration and storage plants, as well as of refrigerator planes for transporting large quantities of liquid deuterium and its tritium spark plug.
Will the H-bomb, if made, add enough to our security to make the effort worth while? We have seen that the required effort may, after all, not be very great. In fact, it may turn out to be a relatively small one, in view of the fact that all the basic ingredients and plants are already at hand and fully paid for. But supposing even that the effort turns out to be much more costly than it now appears? The question we must then ask ourselves is: Can we afford not to make the effort?
It is true, of course, as some have pointed out, that ten or even fewer A-bombs could destroy the heart of any metropolitan city, while only one would be quite enough, as we know, for cities the size of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But that neglects to take into consideration the fact that one H-bomb concentrates within itself the power of thirty A-bombs to destroy by fire and by burns an area of more than 1,200 square miles at one blow. Nor does it take into consideration the military advantage of delivering the power of a combination of ten and thirty A-bombs in one concentrated package, which would make it a tremendous tactical weapon against a huge land army scattered over many miles, or its possible enormous psychological effect against such an army.
Most important of all, this view grossly minimizes the apocalyptic potentialities of the H-bomb for poisoning large areas with deadly clouds of radioactive particles. It is a monstrous fact that an H-bomb incorporating one ton of deuterium, encased in a shell of cobalt, would liberate 250 pounds of neutrons, which would create 15,000 pounds of highly radioactive cobalt, equivalent in their deadliness to 4,800,000 pounds of radium. Such bombs, according to Professor Harrison Brown, University of Chicago nuclear chemist, could be set on a north-south line in the Pacific approximately a thousand miles west of California. “The radioactive dust would reach California in about a day, and New York in four or five days, killing most life as it traverses the continent.”
“Similarly,” Professor Brown stated in the American Scholar, “the Western powers could explode H-bombs on a north-south line about the longitude of Prague which would destroy all life within a strip 1,500 miles wide, extending from Leningrad to Odessa, and 3,000 miles deep, from Prague to the Ural Mountains. Such an attack would produce a ‘scorched earth’ of an extent unprecedented in history.”
Professor Szilard, one of the principal architects of the A-bomb, has estimated, as already stated, that four hundred one-ton deuterium bombs would release enough radioactivity to extinguish all life on earth. Professor Einstein, as we have seen, has publicly stated that the H-bomb, if successful, will bring the annihilation of all life on earth within the range of technical possibilities. The question we must therefore ask ourselves is: Can we allow Russia to be the sole possessor of such a weapon?
There can be no question that Russia is already at work on an H-bomb. Like ourselves, she already has the plutonium plants for producing both A-bombs and tritium. She can produce deuterium in the same quantities as we can. In Professor Peter Kapitza she has the world’s greatest authority on liquid hydrogen.
Furthermore, she has great incentives to produce H-bombs. Since she is still behind us in her A-bomb stockpile, she can, in a sense, catch up with us much more quickly by converting her fewer A-bombs into H-bombs that would be the equivalents of ten to thirty A-bombs each, thus increasing the power of her stockpile ten to thirty times. Equally if not more important from Russia’s point of view is the stark fact that an H-bomb could be much more easily exploded near a coastal city from a submarine or innocent-looking tramp steamer, since most of our great cities are on the seacoast, whereas Russia practically has no coastal cities.
Even if we openly announced that we would not make any H-bombs, it would not deter Russia from making them as fast as she could, not only because she would not believe us but also because her sole possession would greatly weight the scales in her favor. If, God forbid, she finds herself one day with a stockpile of H-bombs when we have none, she would be in a position to send us an ultimatum similar to the one we sent to the Japanese after Hiroshima: “Surrender or be destroyed!”
Valuing their liberty more than their lives, the American people will never surrender. But while there is time, would anyone advocate that we run the risk of ever facing such a choice?