Is it possible securely detonate a hydrogen bomb inside a very, very thick iron armor to get the armor only rise its temperature and not break apart? [closed]

Question

Is it possible securely detonate a small hydrogen bomb inside a very, very thick iron armor, preferabely a sphere, to get the armor only rise its temperature and not break apart? Would it be a hazzard as the trigger of the h-bomb must be a toxic fission reaction bomb? If it were the case that it could be done without pollutioning the envionment can this rise of temperature of the armor-sphere be somehow used in a hydogen fusion energetic facility?

Answer 1

This is what Inertial confinement fusion is all about. The H bombs are truly tiny, about the size of a pinhead, and weighing about $10$ mg.

They are detonated with very large lasers that hit from all sides. The lasers heat the surface very quickly. The vaporized surface flies away, creating a reaction force that compresses the pellet. It is like a spherical rocket that drives the pellet towards its center, compressing it to perhaps $100$ times the density of water. This is accompanied by shock waves that heat the center enough for fusion to occur.

Or so the theory goes. In practice, there are endless complications and instabilities that prevent it from working as well as one would hope. Fusion has been made to occur. But so far it takes more energy to power the lasers than you get from the fusion of the pellet.

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Another approach might be something like underground testing of nuclear weapons. You dig a deep well and detonate a bomb at the bottom. This digs a cavern, which is quite hot. You pump cold water down and get hot water back up.

There are some obvious drawbacks. You get lots of cracks, and so radioactive water gets out. The hot water that comes back up is radioactive. Nobody wants this kind of reactor in their neighborhood.

Answer 2

Scientists have been working hard on developing the fusion reactor for many decades now. If there was the possibility of getting energy in the way you describe, they would have done it by now. Maybe you'll find this link to ITER interesting.

So it doesn't seem possible.

The iron sphere would have to be very big to avoid being blown apart or melting. Then there would be extra technical difficulties, like how to replace the fuel (i.e open the sphere and add a new bomb), how to remove the heat efficiently from a such a large sphere to generate electricity etc...