[leonidasrup]

"As strange as it seems now, the notion of “clean” nuclear weapons was taken fairly seriously in the late 1950s and early 1960s. U.S. government officials had been interested in the possibility of such nuclear weapons, which they believed would produce far less radioactive fallout than standard “dirty” thermonuclear weapons."

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2017-0...

[toast0]

It doesn't seem that strange?

You can drastically change the amount of fallout with materials and design decisions, so it's worth considering.

For example, tsar bomba was tested with a lead tamper instead of uranium; this reduced the yield, but also the fallout. The Ripple design has no tamper, was used in the last US airdrop test, and produces very little fallout compared to other designs.

A limited fallout design allows for occupation and/or resettlement after an attack, so it seems useful to consider.

Yes, yes, it didn't make a practical difference because MAD makes them all unusable.

[kridsdale1]

They also wanted these for domestic use. No fallout means making a new Panama Canal, or removing a pesky mountain, are just nuclear construction projects.

[toast0]

Yeah... the problem is if you were to use them for excavating, you have to explode them on, in, or near the ground which will generate lots of fallout from neutron irradiation of the ground materials.

Clean H-bombs are only clean if used for air bursts, but air bursts aren't effective for excavation.