Fourth Generation nuclear weapons

[A_Mysterious_Stranger]

Here are a couple intresting documents. They represent the preoccupation of one guy named Andre Gsponer with future nuclear weapons.   What (to me) sets him apart is a vision of compact nuclear weapons -  he terms 'fourth generation' in the 1-100 ton yield that fit a niche between existing 'conventional' and tactical/strategic (higher yield) nuclear weapons.  I also like Gsponer because he rivals Friedwart Winterberg for obsession in using super explosives to set off nuclear reactions.

 

Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons: Military effectiveness and collateral effects

 

The paper begins with a general introduction and update to Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons (FGNW), and then addresses some particularly important military aspects on which there has been only limited public discussion so far. These aspects concern the unique military characteristics of FGNWs which make them radically different from both nuclear weapons based on previous-generation nuclear-explosives and from conventional weapons based on chemical-explosives: yields in the 1 to 100 tons range, greatly enhanced coupling to targets, possibility to drive powerful shaped-charge jets and forged fragments, enhanced prompt radiation effects, reduced collateral damage and residual radioactivity, etc.

 

The physical principles of thermonuclear explosives, inertial confinement fusion, and the quest for fourth generation nuclear weapons

 

This one has an online version if you dislike PDFs. 

 

No abstract but I've summarized the first few sentances covering many of the chapters

This report is an assessment of the prospect of developing new (i.e., fourth generation) nuclear weapons in the context of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1996 and of the current moratorium on nuclear testing in effect in all nuclear-weapon States.

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The first chapter is a primer on thermonuclear weapons based on a scientific understanding of the physical principles of existing nuclear weapons and on the results of ISRINEX, a simple thermonuclear explosion simulation program specially developed for independent disarmament experts

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The second chapter is a technical and legal analysis of the nuclear tests which are allowed by the CTBT: microexplosions and subcritical experiments

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The third chapter is devoted to the military applications of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and other pulsed-power technologies.

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The fourth chapter is devoted to fourth generation nuclear weapons. These new fission orfusion explosives could have yieldsin the range of 1 to 100 ton equivalents of TNT, i.e., in the gap which today separates conventional weapons from nuclear weapons

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The conclusion stresses that considerable research is underway in all five nuclear-weapon States (as well as in several other major industrialized States such as Germany and Japan) on ICF and on many physical processes that provide the scientific basis necessary to develop fourth generation nuclear weapons.