Isn't the problem that the fuse for a fusion bomb is a fission bomb, and a fission bomb very violently disperses lots of radioactive material? What am I not getting?
It’s a sealed chamber underground. And the amount of fallout can be controlled. Some fusion designs are “cleaner” than others w.r.t. fallout.
From the wiki,
> A typical design called for a 4 m thick steel alloy blast-chamber, 30 m (100 ft) in diameter and 100 m (300 ft) tall,[9] to be embedded in a cavity dug into bedrock in Nevada. Hundreds of 15 m (45 ft) long bolts were to be driven into the surrounding rock to support the cavity. The space between the blast-chamber and the rock cavity walls was to be filled with concrete; then the bolts were to be put under enormous tension to pre-stress the rock, concrete, and blast-chamber. The blast-chamber was then to be partially filled with molten fluoride salts to a depth of 30 m (100 ft), a "waterfall" would be initiated by pumping the salt to the top of the chamber and letting it fall to the bottom. While surrounded by this falling coolant, a 1-kiloton fission bomb would be detonated; this would be repeated every 45 minutes. The fluid would also absorb neutrons to avoid damage to the walls of the cavity.
You control the detonation with either an engineered or natural cavity filled with fluid. You can then use the fluid as a big thermal reservoir to run steam turbines. Per wikipedia:
>"Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power."
Now... the part you're not getting is that if you can do all that, you can almost certainly just use conventional fission power generation, which is what we really, REALLY need to be doing anyway.
From the wiki,
> A typical design called for a 4 m thick steel alloy blast-chamber, 30 m (100 ft) in diameter and 100 m (300 ft) tall,[9] to be embedded in a cavity dug into bedrock in Nevada. Hundreds of 15 m (45 ft) long bolts were to be driven into the surrounding rock to support the cavity. The space between the blast-chamber and the rock cavity walls was to be filled with concrete; then the bolts were to be put under enormous tension to pre-stress the rock, concrete, and blast-chamber. The blast-chamber was then to be partially filled with molten fluoride salts to a depth of 30 m (100 ft), a "waterfall" would be initiated by pumping the salt to the top of the chamber and letting it fall to the bottom. While surrounded by this falling coolant, a 1-kiloton fission bomb would be detonated; this would be repeated every 45 minutes. The fluid would also absorb neutrons to avoid damage to the walls of the cavity.
You can see the general design here, https://nextbigfuture.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2016/01/zyrEF...