KB8CWB wrote:
Dillogic wrote:
I think antimatter and pure fusion bombs are "clean", and the latter has had a lot of work and money spent on it without any success (it's a popular concept for obvious reasons; big boom in a small package without much scary invisible stuff in the air); I think the former is impossible for the most part because it's too hard to accumulate it in large enough quantities to make a decent bomb.
I recall there's some theory on combining the above; small antimatter charge creating enough pressure to sustain the fusion reaction (currently, they use a smaller fission/atomic bomb to set it off, but with the usual side-effect of various types of fallout based on what they use in the fission bomb).
Neutron bombs are in all actuality the same as an A bomb or a H bomb. The difference is they eliminate the lead/steel/uranium shielding to allow the nasty neutrons to escape. This allows at least 10x the radiation of a standard cased nuclear weapon allowing it to be much smaller in yield and yet having the same kill effect. The consequent blast is smaller and if is detonated high enough then minimal nasty radiation will hit the target and minimal physical damage. Just mainly highly energetic neutrons. They are considered more of a tactical weapon and usage against enemy tanks was one attractive use for them.
It's been years since I was interested in this, but I can recall being somewhat amazed a the way the concepts of "tactical" vs."strategic" nuclear weapons was developed toward the end of the cold war. There were "tactical" artillery shells with almost four times the power of "Little Boy" and that device certainly had a "strategic" impact.
In any case, it's not conceivable that nukes could be used effectively to modify weather systems. Thunderstorms typically have much more energy than even very large strategic weapons and disrupting a mesocyclone in one place will not remove that energy. You are just going to move the effects around unpredictably.