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Concept
Cobalt bomb
Summary
A cobalt bomb is a type of "salted bomb": a nuclear weapon designed to produce enhanced amounts of radioactive fallout, intended to contaminate a large area with radioactive material, potentially for the purpose of radiological warfare, mutual assured destruction or as doomsday devices.
The concept of a cobalt bomb was originally described in a radio program by physicist Leó Szilárd on February 26, 1950. His intent was not to propose that such a weapon be built, but to show that nuclear weapon technology would soon reach the point where it could end human life on Earth, a doomsday device.
The Operation Antler/Round 1 test by the British at the Tadje site in the Maralinga range in Australia on September 14, 1957, tested a bomb using cobalt pellets as a radiochemical tracer for estimating yield. This was considered a failure and the experiment was not repeated. In Russia, the triple "taiga" nuclear salvo test, as part of the preliminary March 1971 Pechora–Kama Canal project, produced relatively high amounts of cobalt-60 (60Co or Co-60) from the steel that surrounded the Taiga devices, with this fusion-generated neutron activation product being responsible for about half of the gamma dose in 2011 at the test site. The high percentage contribution is largely because the devices primarily used fusion rather than fission reactions, so the quantity of gamma-emitting caesium-137 fallout was comparatively low. Photosynthesizing vegetation exists all around the lake that was formed.
In 2015, a page from an apparent Russian nuclear torpedo design was leaked. The design was titled "Oceanic Multipurpose System Status-6", later given the official name Poseidon. The document stated the torpedo would create "wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time." Its payload would be "many tens of megatons in yield". Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta speculated that the warhead would be a cobalt bomb.
Official source
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