If we made nuclear weapons that fuse helium instead of hydrogen, would they be more powerful?

Question

If we made nuclear weapons that fuse helium instead of hydrogen, would they be more powerful?

Answer 1

-Complete EDIT-

Now that I think of it.  You really wouldn't want a very big nuke.  If you can take out more than a large city, you just wasted money.  Why make one huge nuke when you can take out two cities with two nukes for the same price?  The only use of a very large nuke is political, but when it comes to using it, something smaller is far more effective in the military usage.

On my previous post, I realize that it's chemical properties are different than its atomic properties.  My apologies if I caused any confusion.

Answer 2

I think so but the amount of energy to get that bomb started would be enormous. So I don't think think its possible with today's technology.  

Answer 3

Don't know, but a cobalt bomb "Doomsday Bomb" would destroy all life on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salted_bomb

http://www.rense.com/general40/dooms.htm

Answer 4

The power of a nuclear bomb is determined by how much matter is converted into energy.   You can do this by fusion or by fission.  Since the hydrogen bomb is more than ample for what we need  (50 megatons!) there is no reason to try to develop a whole new fusion bomb.  If we want bigger,  we just add more hydrogen.  

However,  to answer your question,   if you fused two helium atoms into one Beryllium you would get roughly twice the power of fusing two hydrogen into one helium.   However Beryllium is toxic,  specially if you inhale it so besides the fallout you would have a permanently toxic element to deal with down wind.  Why make things worse than they already are?  

Answer 5

Purely as a response to the Airborne Rangers reponse.  Helium is an inert gas but there is a difference between chemical and nuclear reactions.  Yes, based on the fact that He is an inert gas it does not want to react chemically.  However this is not a factor in determining its nuclear reaction capability.

Answer 6

Ummm, we already make thermonuclear bombs more than large enough for our purposes, do we really need bigger ones??

The A-bomb (such as was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were fission bombs.  They used the energy released by splitting Uranium-235 to make their blast.  The explosive power of A-bombs is typically measured in kilotons of TNT.

Since then, we've developed the Hydrogen Bomb (H-Bomb), which fuses Deuterium and Tritium to make Helium and a whole lot more explosive power.  The explosive power of Fusion weapons is typically measured in megatons of TNT.

The amount of explosive energy is derived from Einstein's equation on the inter-convertability of mass and energy, E = mc², which means that the energy released by the total annihilation of a mass m is numerically equal to the mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.

So we **could** go larger, using other fusable nuclei if necessary, but what would be the point?  Isn't 50-100 megatons big enough for you?