Re: russia_1.html

[Jonathan Wienke <JonWienk@ix.netcom.com>]

At 09:37 AM 10/6/97 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>At 3:01 AM -0700 10/6/97, Peter Trei wrote:
>>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.
>
>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.

One of the decay products of tritium (half-life: 12.5 years) is Helium-3,
which aggressively absorbs neutrons and poisons the fission reaction of the
plutonium.  If one has access to more tritium, which is commercially
available for about US $50,000 per gram, the existing tritium can be
purified and combined with the new tritium to bring the bomb back to full
power.  If someone has the resources to obtain the bomb in the first place,
refreshing the tritium probably wouldn't be a major problem.


Jonathan Wienke

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