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Re: russia_1.html
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- Subject: Re: russia_1.html
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- Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 21:52:38 -0400
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Peter Trei:
>The plutonium cores of thermonuclear devices have a limited shelf
>life - he claimed 6 years, which jibes with what I've heard from
>other open sources. Fission products build up in the cores which
>can poison a chain reaction. Thus all Pu based devices need to have
>the cores periodically removed and replaced with new ones, while the
>old ones have to go through a non-trivial reprocessing stage to
>remove the fission products.
Decay, rather than fission, I suppose. I believe there's a treaty
prohibiting nuclear weapons in space. Not so surprising if they're
inpractical - political points for nothing.
Bill Frantz:
>I think this comment is in error. Plutonium has a half life on the order
>of 250,000 years, so very little decay products would build up in 6 years.
>The tritium used in thermonuclear weapons has a much shorter half life, and
>would need to be replaced about that often.
Replacement of tritium is certainly the dominant need.
As for the decay products - it depends how close they get to pure 239.
Half-lives: (years)
Pu 238 89
Pu 239 24000
Pu 240 6500
Pu 241 15
Pu 242 400000
D 0.015
T 12.3
Paul Pomes wrote:
>
>Even a fizzle with a yield in the hundreds of tons equivalent is respectable.
>Plutonium decay products have a high neutron cross-section and steal the
>fast neutrons necessary for the chain reaction to build. Sufficient amounts
>can kill off the last three or more re-doublings which is where most of the
>explosive power comes from.
The only books I have to hand contain _thermal_ cross-sections. :(
If it's an H-bomb I was under the impression you don't care that
desperately about the size of the plute yield - only that it is enough
to start the fusion.
Anybody know what happened to the proposed fissionless H-bomb of the '60s ?
Presumambly it never got working.
Warm&ComfyMonger