I have blogged before about China’s nuclear arsenal and nuclear protocols. Basically, the Chinese have a few hundred nuclear warheads and various delivery options. They have chosen to maintain enough nuclear weapons to discourage anyone from attacking them with nuclear weapons but have a policy of not being the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Since the deterioration of relations between Russia and the U.S., some parties in China believe that the Chinese arsenal should be expanded, and their nuclear policies revised.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) just reported on an experiment carried out at the Heavy Ion Research Facility (HIRF) in Lanzhou. The HIRF fired a superheated beam of tantalum 181, a radioactive isotope of tantalum. The CAS said that the experiment was important to “meet a critical strategic demand of China’s national defense”.
One of the researchers said that it was very difficult to create a high-quality, high-output tantalum beam because tantalum melts at about three thousand degrees Celsius. It has been a problem to isolate the tantalum and generate a particle beam that was large enough to conduct experiments. Tantalum is almost as heavy as gold and they needed to use advanced magnetic technology to impart high velocity to the ions as well as control their movements.
A professor of nuclear science at Beijing Normal University who was not involved in the tantalum project said that the experiment was likely carried out to further the development of nuclear devices that contained tantalum. This type of nuclear weapons is called a “salted bomb.” The name is derived from the mediaeval practice of spreading salt on land in conquered nations. The salt prevented the growth of crops and, essentially, killed the land.
A salted bomb containing tantalum would release a cloud of radioactive isotopes much bigger than that released by a similar bomb without tantalum. The salted bomb cloud would spread over a larger area than the cloud from a conventional nuclear bomb. The fallout from a tantalum bomb would render the land uninhabitable for months. Cobalt has also been tested in previous salted bombs developed by Britain.
The professor went on to say, “The most likely application that I can think of [for the tantalum acceleration experiment] is in nuclear research. By generating a powerful beam of tantalum ions, we can observe how the metal interacts with other elements and change form in high-speed collisions. It simulates what will happen in a real nuclear reaction.”
China has expanded and modernized it nuclear arsenal in the past few years. It is dedicated to attaining the highest level of deterrence with the fewest nuclear weapons possible. They may feel that the development of salted bombs could assist in that goal.
Leo Szilard, a pioneer of nuclear weapons, first suggested the idea of salted bombs. He feared that their widespread use could poison so much of the Earth’s surface that the human race would not be able to survive. Some nuclear authorities have suggested that salted bombs could make a good doomsday device that a nation could threaten to detonate if they were attacked with nuclear weapons. There is great concern that a nuclear war could bring the end of human civilization. The use of salted bombs might guarantee it.
