This is John Bachelor, conversation with my colleague Henry Sakhalsky of the Non-Proliferation

Policy Education Center on anniversaries this time of year.

The anniversary, the remembrance of the Hiroshima Nagasaki Bob in 1945 and also the

remembrance of the This is a memory that also connects to the Eisenhower

Adams for Peace proposal to the United Nations and it's unusual

results all the nuclear power reactors today, the risk and the

reward of those nuclear power reactors. Henry Sikalski on the Soviet H-bomb and what it led to or what it might have led to many decades later.

More of this later.

This, uh, nuclear tests the Soviets conducted on the 12th of August,

1953, 70, roughly 70 years, 70 years.

And it was their first attempt

a nuclear device, which failed.

They used a design called a layer cake designer, roughly, a rough Russian translation.

It had nuclear, different kinds of nuclear fuels, lithium duturide being one of them, and that when it's

bombarded with neutrons turns into thermonuclear fuel trenium.

And they were hoping that it would produce a true megaton yield.

It didn't, but it did produce 400 kilotone release of energy, so it was a pretty big deal.

It scared, it rattled Washington, I can tell you that.