A cobalt bomb is a theoretical type of "salted bomb": a nuclear weapon intended to contaminate an area by radioactive material, with relatively little blast.
The weapon's tamper would be of ordinary cobalt metal, which the blast then would transmute to the radioactive isotope cobalt-60 (60Co), which would produce deadly nuclear fallout.
As far as is publicly known, no cobalt bombs were ever build. The Operation Antler/Round 1 test by the British at the Tadje site in the Maralinga range in Australia on 14 September 1957 tested a bomb using cobalt as a radiochemical tracer, but was considered a failure.[
The cobalt tamper would be transmuted into the isotope 60Co upon initiation and bombardment by neutron radiation. 60Co decays into an excited 60Ni by beta decay. The excited 60Ni then transition to a ground state 60Ni, releasing gamma radiation.
The idea of a cobalt bomb was originally describe by physicist Leó Szilárd, who suggested that an arsenal of cobalt bombs would be capable of destroying all human life on Earth (whether he was actually right is disputable). Cobalt was chosen because of the fallout, that would have a half-life of 5.27 years and would be intensely radioactive at the same time. While there exist isotopes with a longer half-life than 60Co, they are also insufficiently radioactive.[1] Many isotopes are more radioactive (gold-198, tantalum-182, zinc-65, sodium-24, and many more), but they would decay faster, possibly allowing some population to survive in shelters.
To provide a point of reference: to equally distribute 1 gram of cobalt per square kilometer of Earths surface one needs 510 tonnes.
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