For some reason (that I haven’t figured out yet) thermonuclear bombs are just so much more efficient than any other proposed fission or fusion reaction.

It’s strange that controlled fusion is an energy sink, but whatever black magic is happening inside an H-bomb manages to unlock so much “free” energy.

Even the cleanest bombs (97%+ fusion rather than fission) turned out to be too dirty for basically everything civilian (unlocking gas reservoirs - too radioactive; landscaping to replace enormous amounts of conventional explosives - too radioactive).

Not really? How do you define efficiency here?

Thermonuclear bombs literally create lots of heat, and don’t tend to drive anything that produces work. It’s the opposite of efficient.

Just like lighting gasoline on fire and claiming that that’s more efficient than a combustion energy…

In order to trigger an H bomb, you first trigger a regular fission bomb to generate the necessary energy to trigger the second fusion stage.

So, fission bombs are the black magic.